Despite the abundance of scams, airdrops do not lose their relevance and are widely practiced by various DeFi platforms. There are many protocols that do not yet have a native token, indicating the likelihood that many future “coin” distributions will emerge out of nowhere.
In search of easy money, scammers use increasingly sophisticated tactics. As a result, not only inexperienced beginners but sometimes even experienced market participants become victims of airdrop scams.
The rapid development of new protocols and the DeFi segment in general has naturally given rise to a large number of fake airdrops. Pseudotoken giveaways organized by scammers target FOMO inexperienced crypto investors and the contents of their Web3 wallets.
Fake sites can appear almost indistinguishable from the originals, and projects can be promoted, at first glance, by real influencers. Therefore, many market participants do not hesitate to approve all wallet interactions required of them, and some even reveal the seed phrase. The result is usually the same: the user completely loses their digital assets when transferring them to the scammer.
In addition to fake sites promoted on social media, investors may suddenly discover new tokens of unknown origin in their wallets.
To find out where the coins come from, market participants arm themselves with blockchain explorers. But they show an error message with the address of a third-party site, where you supposedly have to go to receive the crypto assets that “fell from the sky.”
Examples of Airdrop Scams
Recently, the Celestia platform held an airdrop of TIA tokens. In the context of the distribution, many fake accounts appeared that spread information about the “last chance” to receive the coveted coins.
In this case, potential investors are lured with false promises. Users “only have 24 hours” to post an Ethereum address in the comments and then promote the fraudulent resource through reposts.
Thanks to the viral distribution of the content, the account reaches the target audience, thus taking the first step towards the successful implementation of the plan. The 1,200 addresses listed in the message can receive a certain amount of TIA tokens, but they will need to connect to the scam site to do so.
Scammers can also imitate popular social media users. Copying information from users’ profiles on X. Even experienced investors suffer from these types of phishing scams.
Many projects offer investors to check their rights to receive an airdrop by connecting their wallet on a special page. In turn, scammers create fake websites with similar names.
How to Avoid Encountering an Airdrop Scam
Cryptocurrency projects generally do not keep information about future airdrops secret. After all, your goal is mass adoption of the solution being developed, attracting users and developing the community. Each major distribution is usually accompanied by a large amount of information about it on the official website and on social networks.
Before taking advantage of the next opportunity to receive coins out of nowhere, spend a little time studying the distribution criteria. It is also advisable to look for reviews from other users who have interacted with the protocol.
New projects typically distribute coins to early adopters of the protocols: those who performed swap operations, used cross-chain bridges, and provided liquidity to still very “raw” platform pools. Be extremely skeptical of campaigns that require you to transfer crypto assets immediately before token stamping.
Study the projects carefully. The work done will help you choose an appropriate risk management strategy and make it clear whether it is worth interacting with the protocol.
By Audy Castaneda
