Zora Team Accused of Token Sales Prior to Controversial Airdrop

The social NFT platform Zora found itself at the center of a controversy following the airdrop of its namesake token.

A week ago, Coinbase introduced a new trend called «Coin Everything,» which quickly gained traction within the Base ecosystem, as reported by the AML service BitOK on their Telegram channel. The ZORA token received backing from the official account of this Layer 2 solution.

A few days later, the Zora team confirmed the airdrop. Base lent its support again but did not mention any investments in the project, BitOK noted.

On April 23, users began receiving ZORA tokens without prior notice, prompting community members to criticize the platform for a lack of official communication regarding the airdrop.

According to BitOK, nearly all of the airdropped tokens were sent to the team’s wallets.

Some of these addresses were linked to exchanges Bybit and KuCoin, raising suspicions of corruption in the allocation of assets. Additionally, wallets holding over 100 million ZORA were identified.

It was emphasized that initially, Zora’s representatives owned 65% of the total token allocation. A spokesperson stated that the team would conduct an independent investigation and gather evidence to substantiate their claims.

«The market is currently in a phase of airdrops and meme coins, which scammers are exploiting for quick profits,» noted Machikhin.

An airdrop hunter using the nickname Anton ProfiT shared his experience of participating in the ZORA distribution.

He mentioned that the Zora team had promised automated distribution before the listing, but within the first 2.5 hours, they began selling tokens on the exchange «at a good price.» Only after this did the representatives «quietly open the portal for token claim.»

While Zora promoted a referral program, the most active users were banned for their participation, highlighted Anton ProfiT.

He indicated that his wallet displayed a distribution of 34 million ZORA. After a «30-fold reduction,» the airdrop hunter claimed more than 1 million tokens, but was subsequently blocked «for too much activity.»

«Zora is not Web3. It is a centralized scam disguised as decentralization,» Anton ProfiT concluded.

At the time of this writing, ZORA is trading at approximately $0.02, having fallen nearly 50% from its peak of $0.40.

It’s worth noting that on April 16, Base faced criticism following the collapse of the token «Base is for Everyone,» which had been launched on Zora.