Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher
On March 23, Backpack (also known as B backpack) officially launched its native token $BP and opened the points airdrop claim channel. This event, originally seen as a milestone for the Solana ecosystem and carrying the hopes of many crypto enthusiasts, unexpectedly triggered a strong community震 and plunged into a whirlwind of public opinion.
The core issue remains the token airdrop distribution problem. Well-known KOLs such as Bingwa, He Bi, Tu’ao Dashi, Feng Wu Xiang Suo Professor, Meta Ape, and anymose all stated that their accounts and studio accounts were judged as “witches” by the platform, resulting in significantly lower than expected airdrop gains and severe losses.
“Countless retail investors and I came here with dreams and hopes, believing you are the true innovators, believing it would be different. But sorry, we were wrong. Humans are at the mercy of the system, and we are the victims. I am truly heartbroken this time,” said Little Bear Cookie.
Historically, many projects have been criticized for anti-rug pulls, but never has a project been so fiercely attacked for anti-rug pulls, with so many KOLs participating in the condemnation.
KOL He Bi even directly added this description to his profile: “Warning: Backpack is a scam exchange, a scam group. Do not use it, beware of being scammed.”
1. Successful KOL Marketing Case
Backpack’s rise was once regarded as a textbook example of marketing. Founded by former FTX executives and backed by the strong endorsement of the Mad Lads NFT community, along with its claims of “compliance” and “high performance,” Backpack gained a halo effect right from its launch.
According to RootData, within two years of its founding, Backpack secured $37 million in funding, with investors including Placeholder, Jump Crypto, Robot Ventures, Wintermute, Multicoin Capital, Hashed, Delphi Digital, and other prominent institutions.
In early 2024, when announcing the first phase of the Pre-Season event, Backpack adopted the “trading volume equals points” logic. At that time, market sentiment was extremely high, and the KOL network greatly promoted Backpack’s expansion.
In the following one or two years, many crypto KOLs published “nanny-level tutorials” around Backpack, covering topics such as how to register and complete KYC, how to trade to increase points, how to use multiple accounts to boost earnings expectations, and how to use referral links to reduce costs.
Many KOLs embedded exclusive invitation links in their content, earning through fee rebates and traffic sharing. This model had been validated in several previous projects and gradually evolved into a “semi-industrialized” traffic arbitrage path. Under this setup, the higher the trading volume and transaction fees, the more points users earned, and the more airdropped tokens they received.
Under the enthusiastic promotion of KOLs, countless investors and studios paid high transaction fees to perform wash trading to chase large airdrops. As a result, Backpack’s user growth exhibited clear characteristics: users did not join solely based on product value but were primarily driven by “airdrop expectations.”
2. Backstabbing the “Community”?
However, when Backpack’s airdrop verification link was released, all the hopes of the “profit-chasing” groups were instantly shattered.
The outcome showed that Backpack adopted a strict “one account per person” policy. If a single device or IP operated multiple accounts, all those accounts would be considered “witches,” leading to almost all profit-chasers, especially in the Chinese community, receiving nothing.
For example, the team of anymose, who participated in multiple points events and actively recruited new users, contributed over $4 billion in trading volume, but all their accounts were judged as “witches.”
0x Yu Xi commented that this situation could be described as the “Eight-Nation Alliance” invading China in crypto. Chinese contributions are not the highest, but at least second, yet almost all Chinese are labeled as “witches.” No one fears losing money from anti-rug pulls, but such blatant provocation is intolerable.
“Backpack is the project I’ve spent the most time, energy, and money on in the crypto space. Yesterday’s celebration, which should have belonged to supporters, turned into an absurd farce. I’ve been constantly lowering my expectations. From what I’ve heard, the witch判定 mainly targets Chinese users, with scores likely exceeding 60 million. Many large accounts were wrongly banned. I cannot understand Backpack’s decision to backstab the Chinese community,” said KOL Lin Shan Lynn, extremely dissatisfied.
Meta Ape posted on X explaining that multi-account operations are mainly for arbitrage trading, as using multiple accounts improves capital efficiency and avoids hitting the rebate ratio limit. He dismissed the idea of “playing cat and mouse” with the project team, even proactively sharing his multi-account operation methods with them.
But the final result left him deeply disappointed. “I don’t blame the project for the price差, I’ve seen worse projects. It’s not a big deal. I accept the gamble,” said Meta Ape. “But the problem is, according to the industry rules, if you can’t create any economic value, at least show some emotional respect, right? But their choice was: no respect, no care, no regard. That made me feel like a clown.”
In response to widespread dissatisfaction and criticism, Backpack’s Chinese community lead Claire issued a statement on the 24th, explaining that the strict witch判定 policy was due to the obsession of the US/European compliance team with rules. She announced that an appeal channel would be opened. Users operating three or fewer accounts on a single device and judged as witches would, after manual review, be refunded over 50% of their points. Additionally, the team will initiate targeted token buybacks on the secondary market in the coming days to compensate eligible users.
However, the negative impression of Backpack’s “malicious” behavior has already spread widely. Its token BP has fallen below $0.20 since issuance, with a single-day drop of over 33%. The FDV is only $200 million, far below previous market expectations.
Once trust is fundamentally broken, the cost to repair it will likely far exceed the gains from the previous fee “harvesting.”
