No, it is not a joke, but it is what is called in the crypto and blockchain world, AirDrop, that is a prize or marketing operation, aimed at rewarding users who interacted with a certain platform or owned a certain token before the snapshoot took place. .
In mid-September, many attended the airdrop made by Uniswap, the DEX protocol for decentralized token exchange, as all those who had interacted with the Uniswap protocol were entitled to at least 400 UNI tokens, tokens that are exchanged at the current figures around 7 dollars.
Gift that many have seen and appreciated by the platform, given that we are talking about almost 3000 dollars total, and that many have done what they thought right, those who sold them immediately and those who kept them in the hope that the price one day can become interesting and sell them later.
Well, for those who have not let themselves be carried away by greed, the Mirror protocol has seen fit to carry out an airdrop itself and also take advantage of the UNI token as an airdrop parameter, in addition to others.
The airdrop in question took place in the following ways:
So for all those who have put and kept the LUNA tokens staked on that date they will be able to automatically redeem 220 MIR tokens, by following the following link, instead for those who had at least 100 UNI tokens on their Ethereum address, they are also reserved 220 MIR tokens, and to redeem them they must follow this link instead.
If we consider that now the MIR token is trading at about $1.50, we see how we got at least $300 and without doing anything, in fact in this case the snapshoot procedure does not require the intervention of the beneficiary, but only the final action for the token redemption which must be done manually.
This was not the only case in which we have observed a substantial airdrop in recent months, we remember among all the Airdrop of PornVisory (PVY) which doubled the tokens of those who owned the PVY tokens as of August 31, 2020, or another airdrop occurred with the idle.finance platform, which distributed IDLE tokens to all those who interacted with its platform.
A legitimate question and here we have to give a slightly complex answer, because this protocol operates in a sector of decentralized finance (DeFi), and is part of the macro category of derivatives, very advanced and slightly complicated instruments if you do not have a guide on how they work.
I will limit myself simply by saying that this protocol allows you to create synthetic assets, which can be connected to physical assets and which mirror the same characteristics but on the blockchain.
Usually to create a synthetic asset, in this case a mAsset, you have to overcollaterarize your position by at least 150%, while instead to unlock the funds that have been put in to create the mAsset, it is said that you have to "burn" them.
For more details on this project I can refer you to the official project documentation here, instead for what concerns decentralized finance (DeFi) and the derivatives sector, then you can see the book that explains the various topics in detail, which takes the name of "Mastering DeFi - A practical guide for beginners and the advanced", important because it not only explains the basics of this sector and the various steps of the various protocols, over 30, but it is also the only one that examines 3 different blockchains such as Ethereum (ETH), EOS and Tron (TRX).
A book that analyzes the macro-categories of decentralized finance which are:
All organized into 8 chapters and also divided by blockchain so as to have a complete picture of what we find on the various blockchains and also make the relative comparisons to leave maximum freedom for anyone to use the blockchain they prefer without closing the door to others.
Over 30 protocols analyzed in detail and details, with relative fundamental steps, an indication of the various costs incurred to carry out the various transactions, so as to make the reader aware before he can interact with him.
Translated into 8 different languages, Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Japanese, so as not to exclude anyone from this revolution that is underway and will continue in the years to come.