- Researcher X-explore exposes widespread manipulation in token distribution.
- Sybil groups and airdrop hunters claimed over 55% of Celestia’s TIA token airdrop.
- The bad actors diverted over 28.92 million TIA tokens from the airdrop with at least 106,491 wallets.
A concerning trend has been observed following the airdrop of TIA tokens that marked the mainnet beta launch of the modular blockchain Celestia. According to the findings, more than half of the recipients of Celestia’s TIA airdrops were dishonest actors, otherwise called Sybil Groups or airdrop hunters.
In a recent report, renowned blockchain researcher X-explore disclosed that about 40% of the addresses that received the Celestia airdrop are either Sybil groups or airdrop hunters. For context, Sybil groups and airdrop hunters may be seen as entities that exploit a system by creating multiple fake identities to gain an unfair advantage.
The researcher noted that these Sybil groups are detectable when considering the flow of funds from multiple airdrop addresses into a single wallet. X-explore claimed to have distinctly tracked tokens from the 138,981 wallets participating in Celestia’s native token distribution.
According to findings, Celestia shipped 60 million TIA tokens to 191,391 wallets, with 138,981 addresses claiming them as of November 1. X-explore discovered that large-scale Sybil groups, consisting of at least 20 unique identifiers, controlled 27,090 TIA airdrop addresses. He noted that the addresses diverted 5.22 million TIA tokens from the airdrop, making up approximately 20.1% of the total distribution.
Furthermore, the report disclosed that the second category of Sybil groups similarly cornered 6.65 million TIA from 27,907 airdrop addresses, accounting for 20.7%. Meanwhile, the last set of dishonest airdrop participants controlled 51,494 addresses from the TIA airdrop. This set claimed 17.05 million TIA tokens.
Therefore, the bad actors diverted over 28.92 million TIA tokens from the airdrop, leaving at least 106,491 wallets. In other words, Celestia distributed 55.70% of TIA tokens to dishonest Sybil and airdrop hunters.
Ultimately, the researcher concluded that the count of addresses receiving airdrops from Sybil groups is almost on par with that of regular users. X-explore underscored that this dynamic presents a substantial hurdle for project owners as they endeavor to identify and filter out Sybil addresses.
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