Influencer pumps and airdrop scams

The previous lesson covered attacks on your wallet. This one covers attacks on your judgement: schemes where nothing technical goes wrong and you simply buy something at a price that was set up for you to buy it at.

How an influencer pump works

The mechanics are old; only the venue is new.

1. A promoter, or a group, accumulates a token quietly while it is thin and cheap. Sometimes they are paid in tokens by the project to promote it.
2. They post about it: a "gem" they have "found", a chart, a target, a reason the price will go up. Often with a screenshot of their gains.
3. Followers buy. On a thin book, that buying moves the price sharply, which becomes the next screenshot.
4. The promoter sells into the buying. Because they hold a large position bought far lower, they can absorb every follower's purchase and still have tokens left.
5. Buying exhausts, the price falls, the promoter posts about the "next one".

Nothing in the sequence requires a lie about the project. The information asymmetry is the trade: the promoter knows when they will sell, and you do not.

The tells

• Undisclosed positions. Ask whether the promoter holds the token and when they bought. A refusal to answer is the answer.
• Paid promotion disclosed as opinion. Regulators in several countries have fined celebrities for promoting tokens without disclosing payment. Assume payment unless told otherwise.
• Urgency. "Last chance", "before it's too late", countdowns. Genuine opportunities do not need a clock.
• Screenshots of gains, never of losses. A track record is a full list of calls; a screenshot is a selection.
• A very thin token. Check the 2% depth (Module 1). A promotion of a token with $20,000 of depth to 200,000 followers is a promotion of a token the promoter is selling.
• Affiliate links to exchanges. The promoter earns a share of your trading fees whether you win or lose.

Paid groups and signal services

A subset of the pump: a subscription group that posts "signals". Whether or not the operator is trading against the group, the business model has a problem you can compute. If a group has 5,000 members and posts a buy on a token with $50,000 of 2% depth, the first hundred members to act get a price that the next 4,900 cannot. The group's own buying is the "pump" in the chart the operator screenshots. Early members' gains are late members' losses, and the operator earns subscription fees from all of them.

Key idea: A promotion is a trade in which the promoter knows their exit and you do not. Thin liquidity, undisclosed positions and urgency are the signature. The chart you are shown is the promoter's sale, viewed from the other side.

Airdrops: the real ones

An airdrop is a distribution of free tokens to users, usually to reward early use of a protocol or to bootstrap a community. Real ones exist and have occasionally been worth substantial amounts to early users. That reality is what makes the fake ones effective.

Real airdrops share some features: they are announced through the project's official channels, they require no payment, and claiming them involves a transaction that transfers tokens to you and nothing else.

Airdrop scams

Claim-site phishing. A message or post announces an airdrop for a real project, with a link to a claim site. The site asks you to connect a wallet and "claim". The transaction you sign is an approval or transfer that empties the wallet. This is the most common wallet-drain vector.

Dusting. Unknown tokens appear in your wallet, apparently worth thousands of dollars. To sell them you have to visit the token's site, which is the drainer. Do not interact with tokens you did not ask for; hide them in your wallet interface and move on.

Pay-to-claim. "Send 0.1 ETH to verify your address and receive 10 ETH." No real distribution has ever required a payment.

Farming traps. Some "points" programs encourage you to deposit funds to earn a future airdrop that may never come, or comes with a token whose value is a fraction of what the deposit earned the operator.

Sybil farming. The reverse problem: people create hundreds of wallets to farm a real airdrop. Projects have become aggressive about filtering these, and hours of effort can produce nothing. Not a scam, but a business with a low and uncertain hourly rate that is routinely oversold.

Defences:

• Only claim through links from the project's official site, reached by your own navigation.
• Read the transaction. A claim moves tokens to you. If it asks for approval, permission or a transfer out, close the page.
• Use a burner wallet for any claim. If it is real, move the tokens afterwards.
• Never send funds to receive funds.

The common thread

Every scheme in this lesson works on the same lever: the belief that someone else has information or access that you can borrow for free. Promoters, signal groups and fake airdrops all offer a shortcut past the work of evaluating a market. The work is the product. A trade you cannot explain from your own analysis is a trade you are taking on someone else's behalf.

Try it: Find the last three tokens promoted in your social feeds. For each, check the price on the day of the post and thirty days later, and the 2% depth on the day of the post. Then find any airdrop link you have been sent recently and, without clicking, compare its domain with the project's official one character by character.

Recap

• A pump is a promoter selling a thin token into buying they generated; the chart is their exit.
• Tells: undisclosed positions, urgency, gain screenshots without losses, thin depth, affiliate links.
• Signal groups convert early members' gains from late members' losses while charging both.
• Real airdrops are free, announced officially, and transfer tokens to you; fake ones ask for approvals, transfers or payments.
• Use a burner wallet for claims, never send to receive, and ignore tokens that appear unasked.