On March 23, Backpack (also known as Backpack) officially launched its native token $BP and opened the claiming channel for points airdrop. This event, once regarded as a landmark moment for the Solana ecosystem and laden with hopes from countless yield farmers, unexpectedly triggered a massive community earthquake, plunging into a public relations crisis.

The core issue lies in the airdrop token allocation. Prominent KOLs including IceFrog, HeBi, AussieLionBro, FengWuXiangSuo Professor, MetaApe, and anymose all reported that their personal accounts and studio wallets were flagged as "sybil" by the platform, resulting in far lower airdrop returns than expected and severe financial losses.

"Countless small investors, including me—we all came to Backpack with dreams and aspirations, believing you were a fresh force, different from the rest. But sorry, we were wrong. We are the fish on the chopping block, at the mercy of others. This time, we’re truly heartbroken," said Xiaoxiong Binggan.

Throughout history, many projects have faced backlash for reverse farming, but none have been condemned so harshly or drawn such widespread condemnation from so many high-profile KOLs.

KOL HeBi even added the following statement directly to his bio: "Note: Backpack is a scam exchange and fraud group—do not use it under any circumstances, beware of being scammed."

1. A Successful KOL Marketing Case

Backpack’s rise was once considered a textbook-level marketing success story. Founded by former FTX executives, backed by the strong credibility of the Mad Lads NFT community, and touting "compliance" and "high performance," Backpack entered the market with immense prestige.

According to RootData, Backpack raised $37 million within two years of launch, attracting top-tier investors including Placeholder, Jump Crypto, Robot Ventures, Wintermute, Multicoin Capital, Hashed, and Delphi Digital.

In early 2024, Backpack announced the initiation of its first phase, Pre-Season campaign, adopting a “trading volume equals points” logic. At that time, market sentiment was extremely bullish, and the KOL network dramatically accelerated Backpack’s expansion.

Over the following one to two years, numerous crypto KOLs published comprehensive “step-by-step guides” around Backpack, covering topics such as how to register and complete KYC, how to trade to boost points, how to leverage multiple accounts to increase expected yields, and how to use cashback links to reduce costs.

Many KOLs embedded exclusive referral links in their content, generating revenue through fee rebates and traffic-sharing mechanisms. This model had been proven effective across multiple prior projects and gradually evolved into a semi-industrialized traffic arbitrage pipeline. Under this framework, the higher the user’s trading volume and associated fees, the more points they earned—and consequently, the larger their airdrop allocation.

Under the enthusiastic promotion of KOLs, countless investors and studios were willing to pay exorbitant fees for wash trading in pursuit of substantial airdrops. In this propagation structure, Backpack’s user growth displayed a clear pattern: users weren’t primarily driven by product value, but rather by the expectation of airdrop rewards.

2. Backstabbing the Community?

However, when Backpack released its airdrop eligibility verification link, all yield farmers’ expectations were shattered.

The outcome revealed that Backpack implemented a strict “one account per person” policy. If a single device or IP managed multiple accounts, all associated accounts were labeled as “sybil,” leading to nearly universal loss of airdrop rewards—particularly affecting the Chinese-speaking community.

For example, anymose and his team, who participated in multiple rounds of point campaigns and actively referred new users, contributed over $4 billion in trading volume to Backpack—but all their accounts were classified as sybil.

0x Yuxi commented: “This incident feels like the Eight-Nation Alliance invading China in crypto. The Chinese community contributed not the most, but certainly second only to the top. Yet we’re now just casually labeled as ‘sybils.’ No one fears losing money from reverse farming, but this outright provocation? Nobody can tolerate it.”

“Backpack was the project I invested the most time, effort, and capital into within the crypto space. Yesterday, what should have been a celebration for supporters turned into a farcical spectacle. I’ve kept refreshing my understanding of the industry’s bottom line. From my conversations, sybil detection mainly targeted Chinese users, and the score likely exceeds 60 million. A huge number of major players were wrongly flagged. I simply cannot comprehend why Backpack chose to backstab the Chinese community,” expressed KOL Linshan Lynn, deeply dissatisfied.

MetaApe posted on X explaining his multi-account operations, stating they were primarily driven by arbitrage needs—multiple accounts improved capital efficiency and avoided hitting transaction volume caps that would trigger rebate ratio restrictions. He dismissed playing the “cat-and-mouse game” with the project team, thus did not isolate accounts, and even proactively disclosed his multi-account strategy to the Backpack team.

Yet the final result left him profoundly disappointed. “I don’t blame the project for price discrepancies—I’ve invested in enough garbage projects already; one more won’t make a difference. It’s a matter of accepting risk. But here’s the thing: according to industry norms, if you can’t create economic value, at least respect emotional value. Their choice? Ignore it, don’t care, show no respect. That makes me feel utterly ridiculous.”

In response to the overwhelming backlash, Claire, Backpack’s Chinese region lead, issued a statement on the 24th, clarifying that the stringent sybil detection policy stemmed from the European and American compliance teams’ rigid adherence to rules. Going forward, an appeal channel will be opened: users operating three or fewer accounts from a single device who were incorrectly flagged as sybil will, after manual verification, receive over 50% of their points restored. Additionally, the team will initiate a targeted token buyback program on secondary markets within days to provide special compensation to eligible users.

Nevertheless, the public perception of Backpack’s “malicious behavior” has already spread widely. Since its token launch, $BP has plummeted below $0.2, with a single-day drop exceeding 33%, and its FDV now stands at merely $200 million—far below previous market expectations.

Once trust suffers a fundamental fracture, the cost for Backpack to repair it will likely far exceed the profits previously harvested via trading fees.