aPriori Denies Team Involvement later than Entity Claims 60% of Airdrop

What Triggered the Controversy Around aPriori’s Airdrop?

Web3 beginup aPriori said Friday that suspicious airdrop activity involving thousands of interconnected wallets was not tied to anyone within the company or its foundation. The statement comes later than blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps reported that a single entity captured roughly 60 percent of the project’s APR token airdrop through a cluster of about 14,000 wallets.

The pattern closely resembles a Sybil farming operation, where one actor uses numerous addresses to maximize allocation from “fair drop” mechanisms. Bubblemaps CEO Nick Vaiman said the project’s initial response appeared “dismissive,” suggesting aPriori implied a leak might have given someone an advantage. “They’re saying there was a leak and someone used that info,” Vaiman told Cointelegraph.

APriori lowered eligibility requirements for the Monad Mainnet airdrop to reward “genuine users,” but said it found “no evidence that anyone on the contributing team or from the foundation has claimed the airdrop.” Cointelegraph could not verify who controls the wallet cluster.

APriori, founded in 2023 and backed by Pantera Capital, HashKey Capital, Primitive Ventures and others, has raised 30 . The was meant to be a milestone moment ahead of Monad’s mainnet launch.

Investor Takeaway

How Did aPriori Change Its Airdrop Structure later than the Incident?

In response to the controversy, aPriori adjusted the parameters of the upcoming airdrop and increased the initial unlock. Users will now be able to claim 15 percent of their allocation — up from the original 12 percent — when Monad on Nov. 24.

The remaining 85 percent becomes claimable six months later than mainnet launch, according to updated technical documentation.

APriori also introduced a boosted-unlock option. Users can unlock the remaining 85 percent ahead if they deposit assets equal to ten times the value of their airdrop allocation for 14 days. This design mirrors “bonding” or “commitment-based” unlocks used by several other Web3 projects to filter out short-term participants.

These changes reflect ongoing tensions in the industry between rewarding ahead supporters, limiting exploitation and retaining users long enough to build a meaningful ecosystem.

Why Sybil Farming Keeps Exploding Across Web3 Airdrops

The aPriori incident is the latest in a growing list of airdrop controversies. Professional airdrop farmers — sometimes operating as coordinated clusters — routinely capture disproportionate shares of .

Several underlying :

• High financial rewards: A single successful Sybil farm across thousands of wallets can generate millions in token value.
• Low identification barriers: Many airdrops rely on on-chain activity alone, which is simple to scale using scripts and virtual environments.
• Fragmented anti-Sybil tooling: Projects often lack unified frameworks or standardized heuristics to detect address clustering.

The Arbitrum airdrop in March 2023 illustrated the scale of the issue: farmers consolidated 3.3 million dollars’ worth of ARB tokens from nahead 1,500 wallets into just two addresses.

In aPriori’s case, the cluster size — around 14,000 wallets — raises the question of whether new methods or pre-announcement information may have been exploited.

Investor Takeaway

How Are Investors Reacting to aPriori’s Investigation?

The crypto community remains sharply divided following aPriori’s statement. Critics argue the project has not provided enough technical detail to support its claim of no internal involvement. Some traders warn that a lack of clarity could undermine confidence in both the project and Monad’s upcoming mainnet launch.

Crypto investor IbrahimXBT said on X that “second phase of rug is coming,” accusing the project of encouraging hype through bot-driven engagement.

Others defended the aPriori team, blaming professional farmers. “This is 100 percent false, the FUD is orchestrated by a competing entity,” said user quickLife, arguing that airdrop farmers caused the imbalance.