Bogus airdrop scams inundate X resulting in a 20 surge in BLAST token
BLAST, the native token of Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling solution Blast, experienced a significant surge of 20% after its launch, while a flood of fake airdrop posts inundated the platform. According to data from Ambient Finance and the trading platform Aevo, BLAST made its debut at $0.02 per token, resulting in a fully diluted value (FDV) of $2 billion upon launch.
Developed by the creators of the incentivized NFT marketplace Blur, Blast’s initial distribution led to a market capitalization of $392 million. As of now, BLAST’s price has increased by over 20% to reach $0.024, according to CoinMarketCap data. The cryptocurrency now boasts a market capitalization of $408 million and a daily trading volume of $730 million.
The airdrop allocated 17% of BLAST’s total supply, with 7% going to users who bridged Ether or USD on Blast (USDB) to the network since late last year. Another 7% was distributed to users who contributed to the success of decentralized applications (dApps) on the network, while 3% was reserved for the Blur Foundation for future community airdrops.
Blast, created by the creators of the incentivized NFT marketplace Blur, faced significant challenges from scammers on social media. Numerous fraudulent posts falsely claimed that Blast’s airdrop had started earlier than expected. These posts, bearing the same profile picture and display name as Blast’s legitimate X account, directed users to fake websites and boasted about “Gold checkmarks” introduced by the platform’s current owner, Elon Musk.
Some of these suspicious links even managed to infiltrate Blast’s official Discord server before being removed by a community moderator. One victim reportedly lost $217,000 worth of crypto after visiting a phishing site, as revealed by the cybersecurity firm Scam Sniffer. The user unknowingly signed multiple malicious transactions, highlighting the ongoing challenges in combating fraudulent activities on the platform.
Despite the successful distribution of the airdrop, it received criticism from market commentators on X, particularly regarding the absence of a staking mechanism for BLAST tokens. Additionally, some BLAST token holders expressed their intentions to sell the airdropped tokens immediately upon the opening of perpetual markets.
Blast’s airdrop is the second Ethereum layer-2 blockchain airdrop to occur in June, following the zkSync airdrop earlier in the month. The zkSync token distribution faced heavy criticism from the community, with claims that many users were left out in favor of Sybil addresses, which are multiple wallets created by the same user to claim a large number of tokens.
