Web3 startup aPriori has gone quiet after fresh allegations over its latest token airdrop, as onchain analysts flag unusually concentrated distribution patterns.
About 60% of the recent aPriori (APR) token airdrop was claimed by a single entity across 14,000 interconnected cryptocurrency wallets, according to blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps.
The wallets were freshly funded through crypto exchange Binance with 0.001 BNB (BNB) each over a short period, Bubblemaps said. All of the addresses then sent their APR allocations to new wallets.
The mysterious entity that claimed 60% of the airdrop allocations was still funding new wallets to claim more of these tokens, Bubblemaps said in a Nov. 11 X post.
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APriori launched its airdrop claim on Oct. 23, shortly before the BNB Chain-native token surpassed $300 million in market capitalization. About 12% of the APR token supply was allocated to the airdrop.
In August, aPriori raised $20 million to expand its trading infrastructure platform, with participation from Pantera Capital, HashKey Capital and Primitive Ventures among others, bringing its total funding to $30 million.
The San Francisco–based company was founded in 2023 by former quant traders and engineers with experience at Coinbase, Jump Trading and Citadel Securities.
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APriori goes silent after insider activity allegations
APriori has yet to address the allegations related to the airdrop. Since the Oct. 23 airdrop claim announcement, its official X page has only published a single unrelated post on Sunday.
“Still no reply from the co-founder, the way they have given zero transparency makes them look no different from scammers,” wrote onchain sleuth ZachXBT in a Tuesday X post.
However, the high concentration of the airdrop’s distribution is not necessarily due to insider activity, but may also hint at a sophisticated airdrop farmer.
In crypto, a professional airdrop farmer (or squatter) is an entity that interacts with emerging protocols solely for the airdrop rewards, often using multiple wallets to compound rewards.
In March 2023, it was revealed that airdrop hunters consolidated $3.3 million worth of tokens from Arbitrum’s ARB airdrop from 1,496 wallets into just two wallets they had controlled.
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