The startup Apriori, backed by venture firm YZi Labs, is under investigation following a token APR airdrop. An analysis by DL News revealed signs of a potential Sybil attack and insider trading.
According to the publication, about 80% of the tokens distributed on October 23 in the BNB Chain network were received by a group of more than 5800 interconnected wallets.
This activity is characteristic of a Sybil attack, where a single user employs multiple addresses to gain an advantage.
Suspicions are heightened by the fact that the wallets were prepared in advance for the distribution. Unknown parties funded them with BNB tokens to cover fees on October 19-20. Meanwhile, the Apriori team publicly announced the airdrop in the BNB Chain network only on October 22.
All 5800 addresses received BNB from the same 13 source wallets. The right to the airdrop for these addresses arose after purchasing Apriori test tokens, which hold no value. Before these operations, the addresses had no transaction history.
Previously, the Apriori project raised $30 million from YZi Labs, HashKey Capital, Pantera Capital, and Primitive Ventures. Its development is led by former engineers from Jump Trading, Coinbase, and Citadel Securities.
At the time of writing, the APR token is trading at $0.28, up 1.5% over the past day, according to CoinGecko.
In October, the EVM-compatible L1 platform Monad opened a portal for obtaining the native token MON.