Beware of fake Arbitrum Airdrops, community warns

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum’s upcoming “ARB” token Airdrop appears to have become a popular target for scammers, with the community warning of hundreds of phishing scams aimed at tricking crypto users.

Announced in a March 16 post by the Arbitrum Foundation, the airdrop will send out 10 billion governance tokens via a token airdrop, allowing holders to vote on code changes. The airdrop is set for March 23.

Unfortunately, the development has led to more than a few attempts from scammers to set up fake token airdrops aimed at stealing funds from victims ahead of the officially slated event.

Blockchain security company Redefine in a March 19 post said it found a website impersonating an official Arbitrum airdrop website. The screenshots show a user is asked by the website to allow access to their funds, which would presumably result in the scammers draining th wallet.

CertiK, another blockchain security firm pointed to a fake Arbitrum Twitter account with the user name “@arbitrum_launch” — which is advertising a token Airdrop. It has warned users not to interact with it.

Meanwhile, Reddit user CryptoMaximalist posted a thread on March 19, warning that “scammers are hoping to capitalize on the complexity of crypto and users excited for free money.”

According to CryptoMaximalist, they found fake “Arbitrum” Twitter profiles with links to fake Arbitrum websites, advising everyone to check a user’s profile and history, and check if they are spamming links across many subreddits before clicking on shared links.

Last week, Web3 anti-scam tool Scam Sniffer told its Twitter followers that it had already detected more than 273 phishing sites related to Arbitrum since the token airdrop was announced, with the number expected to rise before the official drop on March 23.

According to the Arbitrum Foundation, a points system was used to determine who could claim the token airdrop and how many they can claim.

Related: Navigating the world of crypto: Tips for avoiding scams

Qualifying actions included completing more than four transactions or interacting with at least four smart contracts, bridging funds into the chain Arbitrum One and depositing more than $50,000 of liquidity into Arbitrum.

Blockchain analytics firm Nansen, which helped develop the criteria with Arbitrum, revealed that out of more than 2.3 million wallets bridged on the Arbitrum One chain before Feb. 6, only 625,143 are eligible for the airdrop.

“Organic activity earned positive (behaviors to encourage) or negative behaviors to discourage) points. The number of tokens that a wallet received in the airdrop was a function of how many points it collected,” Nansen explained in a tweet on March 16.

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