60% of airdrops were stolen; aPriori goes from a star project to a crisis of trust.

Original article | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author | Asher ( @Asher_0210 )

This Friday, aPriori, a star project that raised $30 million in funding within the Monad ecosystem, announced on the X platform that it will be airdropping more APR tokens on the first day of the Monad mainnet launch. The rewards will not be locked or restricted and will be distributed based on community contributions. All existing APR tokens will also be bridged to the Monad mainnet.

What was supposed to be good news for those who participated in early interactions with aPriori and received more airdrop benefits has backfired, with many questioning, "Has the issue of insider trading been clarified?"

aPriori has already launched TGE, but the token airdrop has sparked discontent within the community.

In fact, although Monad has not yet conducted TGE, its ecosystem's highly funded project, aPriori, was listed on Binance Alpha on October 23, and futures trading was launched on Binance on the same day. On the opening day, the community had a strong negative sentiment towards aPriori: on the one hand, the token price exceeded $0.7 at its highest point after opening, but then continued to fall, dropping to a low of $0.23; on the other hand, the vast majority of early project participants failed to receive the airdrop, and even those who did receive a "pitiful" amount.

APR K-line chart

60% of the airdrop was stolen, suspected of being "insider trading"?

The most unacceptable news is that 60% of the airdropped tokens were claimed by the same entity through 14,000 addresses. On November 11, blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps released data analysis on X showing that 60% of the aPriori project's airdropped tokens were claimed by the same entity through 14,000 interconnected wallets. These wallets each deposited 0.001 BNB through Binance within a short period and then transferred the APR tokens to the same batch of new wallets.

Bubble chart of "insider trading" addresses

On November 14, Bubblemaps stated that they had already contacted the aPriori team to seek an explanation for the situation where "60% of the airdrops were claimed by the same entity through 14,000 addresses," but have not yet received a response.

In addition, blockchain detective ZachXBT also posted on the X platform that he had sent a private message to the co-founder of the aPriori project to explain the "insider trading" issue, but had not received a reply as of November 18.

After the insider trading scandal was exposed, the team remained silent for a long time. The official X account did not post any task-related tweets for several days, and administrators rarely spoke on the Discord channel. Community discontent intensified, and various speculations began to circulate: "Did the project team sell off the tokens and run away?" "Has the team already switched to another project to make money?"

The future of aPriori remains in dispute.

Today, aPriori has transformed from a once highly anticipated "Monad ecosystem star project" into the "center of airdrop controversy" in the community. This Friday, the team finally posted on the X platform, stating that they have noticed the community's discussions regarding the project's potential involvement in witchcraft activities, and that they have not found any evidence that team or foundation members have received the airdrop. They also promised to issue more tokens.

However, this statement appears empty and lacks strength. The community generally believes that the issue of most of the airdrops being claimed by a few entities through 14,000 addresses has not been transparently explained, and the promise of reissues has failed to immediately quell the doubts. The vast majority of community members still have doubts about the project's governance capabilities, transparency, and the team's integrity; the crisis of trust has not dissipated.

There is currently no indication that aPriori intends to provide more data-driven explanations for this "insider trading" incident. Perhaps the only way to convince the community right now is to "drastically increase the price" to appease them.