{"id":86531,"date":"2023-11-02T18:11:11","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T16:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=86531"},"modified":"2025-09-13T06:10:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T03:10:59","slug":"experts-40-of-celestia-tokens-went-to-airdrop-hunters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/experts-40-of-celestia-tokens-went-to-airdrop-hunters\/","title":{"rendered":"Experts: 40% of Celestia tokens went to airdrop hunters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Approximately 40% of the TIA tokens distributed in Celestia&#8217;s airdrop were claimed by hunters, researchers from X-explore found.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">We explore the Sybil Group in the Celestia Airdrop after claiming. We found 20.1% of addresses are controlled by<br \/>large scale sybil groups and 20.7% of addresses are controlled by normal sybil groups.<br \/>Detail in our Mirror: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/9UDUkR9XbO\">https:\/\/t.co\/9UDUkR9XbO<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/jN1mi5VdLM\">pic.twitter.com\/jN1mi5VdLM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 X-explore (@x_explore_eth) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/x_explore_eth\/status\/1720003548073611638?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 2, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The token distribution was timed to the launch of the mainnet named Lemon Mint, which <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/celestia-launches-mainnet-with-modular-architecture\">took place on October 31<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In total, 138,981 addresses claimed TIA out of 191,391 eligible. The declared distribution volume amounted to 44.4 million tokens \u2014 74% of the planned 60 million TIA.<\/p>\n<p>However, the number of wallets that carried out the so-called Sybil attack on the airdrop was nearly equal to the number of ordinary participants, the experts stressed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They identified several hunter categories, classifying them by the addresses they controlled. The largest share, 17.05 million TIA (38.2% of the total mined), went to 51,494 hunter wallets that were not part of umbrella groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Large-scale groups, each concentrating more than 20 addresses, accounted for 5.22 million TIA (20.1%). Other categories of airdrop hunters received roughly the same amount of assets.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers noted that the project team failed to effectively filter attacker addresses from the airdrop, despite their distinctive features.<\/p>\n<p>The most effective hunter group owned a total of 300 wallets and received 77,391 TIA. The coins were transferred in uniform transactions of 258 tokens, which analysts say were hard to miss.<\/p>\n<p>They noted that overall the attacking groups drove an on-chain activity spike in the early stage through large-scale operations. By the fourth block, the number of transactions reached 149, of which 101 were linked to hunter activity.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u00abThis happened long before the spike in trading after the opening of deposits on exchanges like Binance, <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/binance-to-list-tia-ahead-of-celestia-mainnet-launch\">\u0432\u0440\u043e\u0434\u0435 Binance<\/a>, roughly 95 blocks later,\u00bb the experts noted.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A certain sybil group was the first user to do large-scale transactions on Celestia. Their txs happened on block 4 before many CEXs support deposits. This indicates that some sybil groups have advanced technical skills. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/9QKVhYK1zM\">pic.twitter.com\/9QKVhYK1zM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 X-explore (@x_explore_eth) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/x_explore_eth\/status\/1720003553480077391?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 2, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In their view, substantial activity before the TIA listing on centralized platforms, as well as a number of other signs, indicates that drop hunters possess &#8216;advanced technical skills&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Back in September, the Connext Network airdrop <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/connext-network-airdrop-under-attack\">was subjected to<\/a> a Sybil attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Approximately 40% of the TIA tokens distributed in Celestia&#8217;s airdrop went to hunters, researchers from X-explore found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1158,1260,167],"class_list":["post-86531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-airdrops","tag-celestia","tag-research"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"37","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86533,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86531\/revisions\/86533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}