Apriori Faces Scrutiny Over Token Airdrop After Suspected Sybil Attack

Apriori, a trading infrastructure startup backed by Binance founder Changpeng Zhao’s venture firm, is under fire following suspicious activity surrounding its recent APR token airdrop. On October 23, Apriori conducted the airdrop to distribute tokens to its community and contributors. However, onchain analysis reviewed by DL News found that around 80% of the tokens on BNB Chain were claimed by a single clustered group of more than 5,800 wallets.

The activity bears the hallmarks of an industrial-scale Sybil attack, in which multiple wallets are deployed to repeatedly claim airdrops. The timing also raises questions, as the clustered wallets were funded and prepared before the airdrop’s eligibility criteria became public. Apriori and its founder, Ray Song, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Market Impact and Project Background

Apriori’s APR token currently trades at a $93 million market value, down 60% from its all-time high on October 23, according to CoinGecko data. Developed by former engineers from Jump Trading, Coinbase, and Citadel Securities, the project has raised $30 million from venture firms including YZi Labs, HashKey Capital, Pantera Capital, and Primitive Ventures.

The startup aims to build an execution layer for onchain crypto markets using high-frequency trading strategies, seeking to enhance efficiency and reduce the potentially harmful effects of maximal extractable value (MEV) tactics.

Suspicious Transactions and Timing

Apriori also has connections to Monad, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain, and is developing a liquid staking platform on the Monad testnet. While the community expected the airdrop to occur on Monad, the project announced on October 22 that the tokens would instead launch on Ethereum and BNB Chain.

Onchain records indicate that between October 19 and 20, many of the 5,800 clustered wallets received small amounts of BNB, sufficient to claim the airdrop. All of these wallets had been funded by the same 13 wallets in the weeks preceding the event, though the owners of those wallets remain unknown. These accounts had no prior transaction history on Binance or the Monad testnet before acquiring the testnet tokens in early October.

Airdrops and Sybil Attacks

Airdrops are commonly used by crypto projects to reward early contributors, but they are often targeted by Sybil attackers, who create hundreds or thousands of wallets to repeatedly claim rewards. In some cases, insiders have orchestrated such attacks on their own projects. Previous Sybil attackers have reported earning over $10 million using these strategies, highlighting the risk of concentrated token claims in early-stage crypto distributions.