‘Airdrop hunter’ made $750,000 on ZKsync (ZK) airdrop

An ‘airdrop hunter’ earned more than $750,000 from the ZKsync airdrop, leaving many people in the crypto community stunned. According to the analysts from Lookonchain, the person used up to 85 wallet addresses to “farm” ZK, the native token of the ZKsync ecosystem, and got 3.01 million tokens.

Also read: ZK community claims 45% of airdropped ZK tokens in a few hours 

Soon after, the individual transferred about 2.71 million ZK tokens, valued at $678,000, to the Binance crypto exchange. Lookonchain says the person, whom it referred to as an ‘airdrop hunter’, sold 300,000 tokens via Sync Swap for 20 Ethereum (ETH), worth just under $70,000.

ZK ‘airdrop hunter’ to donate $100K to Palestine

ZKsync, the Ethereum layer 2 platform, ‘airdropped’ 3.6 billion tokens, or 17.5% of the ZK token’s total supply, to its users on Monday. The airdrop, a type of free crypto giveaway into people’s accounts, involved hundreds of thousands of wallet addresses. As of writing, 77% of the tokens had been claimed, as per the ZK token distribution page.

Someone received an #airdrop of 3.01M $ZK($753K) via 85 wallets!

This airdrop hunter then deposited 2.71M $ZK($678K) into #Binance and sold 300K $ZK for 20 $ETH($69K) via #SyncSwap.https://t.co/U4OKb7bmVWhttps://t.co/VAPmnj9gsj pic.twitter.com/x8YUPAspbK

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) June 17, 2024

Lookonchain did not name the ZK ‘airdrop hunter’. But X user @Erebos911 posted a cheek-in tongue comment under the analysts’ tweet claiming to be the individual behind the $753,000 ZK token airdrop haul.

“Good catch! I’m retiring from the sybil game, don’t worry guys,” Erebos wrote, alongside an earlier post in which he paid tribute to “my highly profitable $ZK sybilling strategy”.

Erebos claimed to have made almost $800,000 from the ZK token airdrop and promised to donate $100,000 of the earnings to a “legit NGO” in Palestine. Asked about his strategy by other social media users, Erebos said he “just farmed 90 wallets manually. Swaps and most importantly LPs (liquidity pools) for a long time.”

Not everyone was pleased with Erebos getting so much money from the airdrop. “When I see news like this and then lots of average users who have been active two years didn’t get anything… A lot of questions pop up,” one user complained, in response to the Lookonchain post.

Sybils cloud crypto aidrops

Cryptocurrency investors can earn yield by putting their coins in a decentralized exchange, or DEX, to provide liquidity for several assets. This practice is commonly referred to as “farming” in crypto lexicon.

Meanwhile, sybil attacks have caused problems in the sector, particularly for companies involved in airdrops. These types of attacks happen when a bot or individual uses multiple wallet addresses to farm an airdrop, like in the case of Erebos, the so-called ZK token airdrop hunter.

Also read: Binance lists ZK Sync (ZK) with token distribution program

In its frequently asked questions document, which was updated on June 15, ZKsync acknowledged the challenge with sybils and said it tried to filter out such addresses during its airdrop. It noted that some sybils were very hard to detect because they used advanced algorithms.

“They fund accounts from many distinct exchange addresses, never interact with each other, use randomized amounts, and use software to randomize daily patterns of human behavior, and even perform activities unique to the project (for example, using zkSync paymasters),” ZKsync explained.

“The majority of such bots are completely undetectable, even with the most advanced anti-Sybil methodology,” it added.

Cryptopolitan Reporting by Jeffrey Gogo