So we’re all aware of the Uniswap airdrop that took place earlier this year, where some lucky folk woke up to over $1200 worth of UNI dropped to them in their wallet – worth over $3,000 at its peak – simply for interacting with the Uniswap platform prior September 1st 2020. I wasn’t one of these fortunate few and neither were a lot of other people here. I’d see people asking if they were too late for the airdrop, or if there were any other airdrops similar. This gave me an idea:- take part in as many airdrops as possible and see how many had any value to them and report back. The answer may seem obvious to some, but I wanted to evidence it.The task was simple, enter ‘cryptocurrency airdrops’ into a search engine and see what came up. This eventually led me to joining several airdrop telegrams and twitter accounts and after a week or so I had applied for 14 airdrop by mid October.These projects almost universally required the user to join the project’s telegram group as well as like and retweet a post on the project’s twitter account and follow them. Some would ask you to join their Facebook or Medium page and some would require you to post about them and tag friends in. Needless to say, I used throwaway accounts and didn't take part in any that required to tag someone else. Nearly all of them touted themselves as the next big thing in decentralized finance. These were the projects and what they advertised:NameAirdropAdv. $ valueArbiSwap1000 Aswap$30UniSwapx500 UNIX$500Imperium PB100 IPBA$50YFIV Finance1 YFIV$360CryptoTechGiants50 USDT$50Universe Token500 UNIT$500yToken Finance0.2 YTKN$4CeliSwap500 CSP$500XUNII.Finance200 XUNII$20Revo Finance1.5 RVF$28.90Ybull Finance0.2 YBULL$10YFDiamond1 YFD$25Xenon Token5000 XNT$50dEarn Finance70 DFI$700Now, those of you who have been here a while will know exactly where this thread is going. To others, this should confirm their suspicions. Telegram is abbreviated to 'TG'.NameReceivedWhat HappenedArbiSwap0 AswapYou had to pay them $2 for gas to get airdrop worth $1.34 (worth $1.11 as of now)UniSwapx0 UNIXAirdrop never arrived, locked their TG whilst heavily pushing presaleImperium PB0 IPBAAirdrop never arrived, Telegram channel locked 2 days before airdropYFIV Finance0 YFIVAirdrop never arrived but still heavily pushing presale even nowCryptoTechGiants0 USDTAirdrop turned into a competition based on how many people you could refer, TG channel turned into a signal group (A.K.A P&D group)Universe Token0 UNITAirdrop never arrived. Locked their TG and advertised a doubling ETH scam website to their usersyToken Finance0 YTKNAirdrop never arrived. TG locked and then sold to 'BinanceSwap'CeliSwap0 CSPTG locked. Required 0.09 ETH (then $45) to be sent which "they would send back"XUNII.Finance0 XUNIIAirdrop never arrived. TG locked and now advertises other 'airdrops'Revo Finance0 RVFAirdrop never arrived due to "high gas fees". No one bought their presale so they created a poll asking why. Still pushing presaleYbull Finance0 YBULLAirdrop never arrived. Locked and ghosted their TG channel before airdropYFDiamond0.00005 YFDThey airdropped 0.00005 YFD out of the 1 YFD advertised. TG locked and now advertises other 'airdrops'Xenon Token0 XNTAirdrop never arrived. Deleted their TG channeldEarn Finance0 DFIYou had to send 0.05 ETH ($25) to them first to 'validate' your addressSo. out of a combined $2,827.90 worth of cryptocurrencies advertised to be airdropped, only one 'project' actually airdropped anything and that was 0.005% of what was advertised which is currently worthless.This wasn't a surprise to myself and I am glad to have the actual data to back up my suspicions.FINDINGS:Based on the Telegram channels of these 'projects', most of the users were from South America and the Middle East. Presumably from impoverished countries trying to find themselves some income.These 'airdrops' were almost always a front to peddle a presale of their token. This appears to be the primary goal of most of them. They want to sell their newly-minted tokens for ETH, promising their project will get listed on big exchanges 'Soon™'.I only had to provide an email to one project: ArbiSwap. I used a throwaway email. After a couple of weeks I started to receive unsolicited emails from unrelated projects. This indicates that they shared/sold information of their users to other 'projects'.Some of the Telegram channels have been renamed and wiped of all information. The dEarn has been labelled a scam by Telegram themselves. Another has wiped all info and has renamed itself 'Project for Sale' and have made one post stating "We couldn't raise enough from presale, so we abandon the project". I am unable to find out which 'project' this channel belonged to.Some projects seem to work together and promote the other project to their users on TG and twitter.Airdrop twitter accounts and telegrams don't always promote the same airdrops, indicating that they only advertise airdrops that they're paid to advertise by the 'project'.To any newcomers to the cryptosphere, please do your research before taking part in any airdrops. Your time is worth more than most of these 'projects' combined. If something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
Submitted December 16, 2020 at 11:00PM
No comments:
Post a Comment