Beginner's Guide: Don't fall for DeFi-Airdrop-Scams

[bullrun2024bro]

Beginner's Guide: Don't fall for DeFi-Airdrop-Scams on 4chan & Telegram

(I recently created this post on the German board and I thought it would be helpful to have an English translation here on the international Beginners & Help board!)

DeFi (Decentralized Finance) has been on everyone's lips since the beginning of 2020 and new projects are constantly being added. Even experienced users find it difficult to keep an overview here. Unfortunately, cases of fraud in DeFi projects have also been increasing recently, because similar to the ICO hype in 2017, the DeFi hype in 2020 also attracts a large number of scammers.

A few days ago I had a little bit of free time browsing on 4chan (a trash online board, on which various new crypto projects get "shilled" by anonymous users, in other words a filthy scammers paradise, which I didn't know by that time). While reading across the board, I found a post which advertised a free airdrop of an idiotic MEME-Coin-Scam, which got my attention. The rules were pretty easy: Join the project's Telegram group, enter an ETH-address and get a few free tokens. I thought: "Let's give it a try, what could go wrong..." and I joined the project's Telegram channel.

This is what I saw when I entered the channel:



Source: https://t.me/BananaforApe

While reading the first posts in the channel I thought "what kind of bullsh*t is this", but the channel filled to over 1000 users within a few minutes. Absolutely insane! More and more users were joining the channel and the anonymous developer continued to hype them with his idiotic shitposts. After about 20 minutes the developer posted the link to the "airdrop form". And this is what it looked like:



Source: https://t.me/BananaforApe

I entered my "airdrop details" and after less than two minutes the airdrop form was already closed again. Over 600 people signed the sheet in less than two minutes. The hypetrain was starting off and the anonymous developer kept spamming his idiotic messages. Now of course I was curious whether I should really get the "airdrop tokens", or if all of this was a bad joke/scam.

A few minutes later the anonymous developer sent another message, in which he started to ask for 20 ETH in "contributions" or "donations" for additional liquidity on UniSwap. As a reward, there should be then further BANA tokens for all donators.



Source: https://t.me/BananaforApe

I immediately thought: "Oh come on, are you really trying to exit scam here? Nobody can be that stupid to send ETH to a completely unknown anonymous project without a website, a whitepaper or any social media accounts just to participate in an anonymous airdrop for a random scam coin, which is going to be listed on UniSwap."

But to my absolute surprise a lot of people really were that stupid.. - the required 20 ETH were reached within less than ten minutes and the hype/shilling of the scam coin continued. Here is an excerpt of how the individual transactions were sent into the scammer's ETH wallet:



Source: https://etherscan.io/

As of now, the developer/scammer had already taken over 20 ETH and I thought the exit scam must be around the corner any minute. But I was wrong again. To my surprise, the developer/scammer really began to send the project's tokens to the "airdrop participants" and I also got 50 BANA sent to my ETH wallet. The anonymous developer then continued to "shill"/hype his coin in the project's Telegram channel and even more people were joining the channel. At that time, the channel had almost 1500 users.

A few minutes later the anonymous developer then really listed the coin on UniSwap and requested everyone in the channel to provide additional liquidity, to shill the coin on 4Chan, Twitter, Bitcointalk and other Telegram groups - and of course to buy his scam coin. And now you might know what happened: Yes, people really started to buy his coin and added several ETH liquidity on UniSwap (lol, I still can't believe that this really happened!).

The coin started pumping so far that the "airdropped" coins were temporarily worth more than 0.5 ETH (I didn't sell my "airdropped" coins, since I knew by that time that the whole thing must be a scam and I didn't want to dump my free bags to some other innocent users.) This UniSwap-pump-spectacle lasted only about 15 minutes, as with increasing liquidity by other users, the developer began to sell his token share and to withdraw his own liquidity. While the scammer sold his own coins, he of course kept hyping the users on the project's Telegram channel.

After about an hour the scam was over and the coin's price fell to almost zero. The scammer made about 30 ETH and many users who jumped on coin later on had lost their valuable ETH.

Conclusion:

In my opinion this report describes the current state of many crypto airdrops/scams really well. Compared to the "ICO-bubble" in 2017/2018 things got even worse. Nowadays you don't even need a whitepaper, social media accounts or a real team. As long as scammers know how to shill their project, there are enough users that are willing to buy any bullsh*t coin, no matter how bad it is or how little information are available.

To all newbies out there and to everyone who is new to the DeFi-World: Don't fall for these kind of scams. Always do a proper research and double-check all information given before investing real money.

Some time ago I posted here on Bitcointalk, that I think that things like the 2017/2018 ICO scams won't happen again - but I was wrong. It is happening right now and things got even worse.

Take care everyone! Don't let filthy scammers take your money.

Additional threads:

1. DeFi scams [history] by zasad@

2. DeFi-Scams - Big All-In-One-Thread by bullrun2020bro

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[tbct_mt2]

Once again, scammer uses a very old and common scam technique. Send first and get something back later. No matter how much the contributed amount is (0.1 ETH in this scam), it is a scam rule to join a scam group.

If people always keep it in minds and don't let greediness blurs their minds, they won't be scammed.

I turn off the option to invite me to groups from Telegram users that are not in my contacts. Everyone should do this too because scammers join groups to get list of users in groups and send their scam invitations.

[cryptoaddictchie]

I dont know if they are really that naive or not thinking straight. If its called an airdrop then it should be free at all. Sending any amount to a free airdrop is obviously a scam. Obviously excluded with the likes of uni which you should claimed via their system page and you will spend eth for gas not for sending transaction.

Telegram groups are now heavily densed with scam airdrops. If you are lucky you find some gem but not all are can easily be seen and will only turn out to be scam.

[jossiel]

Those victims might be newbies looking for easy money on the web and instead of them finding a treasure chest, they are the ones that were caught off guard and described as the money by that developer.

It's one problem for these defis, the new investors don't look carefully at what they are investing. What matters to them is that it's on any exchange or swap platform.

While others might learn from this, there will be a batch of new investors that can get caught by scammers like him.

[bullrun2024bro]

Once again, scammer uses a very old and common scam technique. Send first and get something back later. No matter how much the contributed amount is (0.1 ETH in this scam), it is a scam rule to join a scam group.

If people always keep it in minds and don't let greediness blurs their minds, they won't be scammed.

You are right, but in my opinion this case is a little more complex. It's not just a regular "Send me one BTC get back two BTC scam" anymore - the developer is luring the users in with a free airdrop, which he is actually dropping to the participants. The actual scam is then happening on the next stage, when people start providing liquidity on UniSwap (or buy the scam coin on UniSwap ofc). This underlines that fact that scammers nowadays are way more creative when it comes to scamming people out of their money and it seems that UniSwap unfortunately is the perfect tool for that.

Telegram groups are now heavily densed with scam airdrops. If you are lucky you find some gem but not all are can easily be seen and will only turn out to be scam.

Telegram is a scammers paradise. I highly doubt that these "golden Telegram airdrop opportunities" like $MEME, which are shared on Twitter on a regular basis are legit at all. In almost every case it's a small circle of people manipulating the price, to scam people who jump on the coin later on.

Those victims might be newbies looking for easy money on the web and instead of them finding a treasure chest, they are the ones that were caught off guard and described as the money by that developer.

I honestly doubt that only "newbies" lose money on these kind of scams. Since the whole process is a little more complexe you definitely need a bit of crypto experience (e.g. how to use UniSwap, how to add Liquidity or how to adjust your TX-fees that your transactions will go through). Unfortunately many users are getting greedy and turn off their heads. They read all this miracle airdrop stories on social media and think the scam coin they are "investing in", will be another 1000x story.

[btcltcdigger]

Oh yeah there's dozen of these type of scams being created daily, and some are pretty smart about it.
For example, where you showed how people are sending ETH, sometimes the scammers do it themselves to make it looks like it's actually a thing and there's hype about it.

[sujonali1819]

De..............Fi............ is a hyped word in the recent crypto market. And it turned into a thing that people think if they do let to invest upcoming project presale maybe they will lose a huge profit. Maybe the victims are the same people who blindly trust in word Defi.  And the real truth will be these blind Defi lovers stop to trust after losing the full amount of profit what they earned from the beginning of Defi.

[Raflesia]

DeFi A lot of people are addicted to the DeFi project so hopefully they realize soon. 

Almost every day I see people on social media and telagram promoting a lot of defi projects, I don't know if they are just airdrop hunters or are indeed investing in pre-sellers whose projects are doing, they are afraid this is a trap and later they will lose everything.

DeFi is now so easy to enter the stock exchange. Dex is that easy? or are they behind playing money to get tokens listed?

Because I think it's so easy with a project from DeFi to enter the market.

[Jack_Sin]

Why are so many people willing to pay 0.1 ETH for junk tokens, they are just airdrop tokens and don't expect it to grow unless you want to collect lots of worthless tokens in your wallet. Stop being greedy because the best projects don't develop that way.

[Pmalek]

Sad really. The symbolism is unbelievable. He is calling members of his Telegram group apes/monkeys and offers them bananas.
Look at the airdrop form. Are you an ape? Both answers suggest something that an ape would do. Scammers don't even have to try that hard, they still get showered with money.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

Many people say this DeFi hype is a scam because the DeFi market is full of scammers that they will take away all of your money, just like what happened in the last year of 2017 that ICO is also full of fraud and unsuccessful projects. It is why we should not follow this DeFi hype because some scammers will only play a trap on us with their fake airdrops and giveaways posted on different social media sites.

[jossiel]

Those victims might be newbies looking for easy money on the web and instead of them finding a treasure chest, they are the ones that were caught off guard and described as the money by that developer.

I honestly doubt that only "newbies" lose money on these kind of scams. Since the whole process is a little more complexe you definitely need a bit of crypto experience (e.g. how to use UniSwap, how to add Liquidity or how to adjust your TX-fees that your transactions will go through). Unfortunately many users are getting greedy and turn off their heads. They read all this miracle airdrop stories on social media and think the scam coin they are "investing in", will be another 1000x story.

You are right with that explanation. Having an experience with hovering things as you have mentioned can't be understood by a newbie easily but with set of instructions given, they might follow it.

In summarizing it, you are right about everyone who's greedy enough to fall for this are not just newbies but also those who are aware with cryptocurrency. They've just let their guards down because of the promised return.

[Ryker1]

Well, thank you for sharing this post, this should be considered as a lesson to learn not just only by newbies and also by us.
Only naive people will fall into this kind of trap ^{[an old trap but effective]}, --they even don't think that a short period of hype will commonly end up top scam. Sometimes when the greed will over control on us, we have the strong guts to risk money even we know that possible consequences of scamming, but since we all want to have profit, risking to this hype projects will become leads us to scam.
With the growth of the Defi sector projects, hacking incidents are pretty expected.

[akirasendo17]

that is 100% scam airdrop are free so why would they send 0.1 eth, this kind of scheme is not new to everyone, i think they maybe newbies or batch of greedy people who think they found a gold mine, but they don't know that they are the one being mine by the project, looking for website and the people behind it should be check, and what are the products ,thanks for the post this helps our newbies to evade this scam.

[plvbob0070]

Is that how the developer defines the word "airdrop"? Because from what I understand, an airdrop is supposed to be advantageous as they will send free tokens to promote their project. If you are going to search the word "cryptocurrency airdrop", you won't find the word "donation" on its definition because it does not work that way. By the time I read that word, I can't believe how people are convinced to trust their funds to a stranger that is treating them badly. They don't have any idea that they are being fooled around and it is sad. I hope they learn from that experience.

[ice18]

Unfortunately until this moment I can see many new shitcoins similar like this one they airdrop yield framing shit tokens provide even huge liquidity on Uniswap and after some 30 minutes to an hour pulled out the liquidity and gone and actually I almost scammed lately by shitcoin listed on Uniswap with 600 eth liquidity good thing I observed first and same thing happens disappear in an hour be wise to buy new shitcoin and sending eth in exhange to tokens which has no real usecase scam is everywhere. 

[1miau]

Some time ago I posted here on Bitcointalk, that I think that things like the 2017/2018 ICO scams won't happen again - but I was wrong. It is happening right now and things got even worse.

Same here. It is really hard to understand because many DeFi coins are completely useless. It's just speculation of highly hyped shit where the only task is to find a bigger idiot who is paying more for it. That reminds me of an useless Ethereum Token ICO called "useless Ethereum Token" which collected around 200k USD in an ICO in 2017 and is now, no surprise - totally worthless. 

Same will happen to most DeFi coins.

Of course, not all DeFi coins are scams but if you are lucky to pick one which isn't scam, it is most likely highly overvalued right now.

[libert19]

I took part in airdrop project called 'padthai' which exit scammed just around a week ago, they had anonymous team and steps were pretty much similar to what you described. I lost 0.2 eth in it.

[Pmalek]

Is that how the developer defines the word "airdrop"? Because from what I understand, an airdrop is supposed to be advantageous as they will send free tokens to promote their project.

The term airdrop and its meaning has changed a lot in the last 5 years. In the past, an airdrop meant you post your wallet address and you receive free tokens to it. That was it. Over time, to receive free airdrops, you had to perform simple social media tasks. Like a Facebook page, follow the project on Twitter, etc. Then the tasks expanded. Write a tweet, retweet, post a comment on your wall...

Nowadays, new users don't even know how airdrops looked in the past. They think all these tasks you have to perform are completely normal. I have even seen and heard about airdrops requesting users to send some gas to cover the transaction fees. You can tell a lot about the future of a project who needs gas to cover fees for free tokens.

[Cryptoababe]

The worst part of it is people still go on to send eth to get airdrop when they know that airdrop is absolutely free. No matter how much people are being warned about these airdrop scams, we will still find some people falling for them. Airdrop scam is now an uncontrollable thing these days