Join the Backpack Backstab Community

Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

On March 23, Backpack officially launched its native token $BP and opened the channel for point airdrop claims. This event, originally viewed as a landmark occurrence in the Solana ecosystem and holding the hopes of countless opportunists, unexpectedly triggered a strong backlash from the community, plunging it into a whirlpool of public opinion.

The core reason remains the issue of airdrop token distribution. Well-known KOLs such as Ice Frog, He Bi, the Australian Lion Brother, Professor Feng Wuxiang, Meta Monkey, and anymose all stated that their accounts, as well as those of their studios, were deemed “witch” accounts by the platform, resulting in airdrop earnings falling far short of expectations, leading to significant losses.

“Countless small retail investors and I came to Backpack with dreams and hopes, believing you were the clean stream and that it would be different. But sorry, we were wrong, the knife is in human hands, and I am the fish meat. This time, I’m really heartbroken,” said Little Bear Biscuit.

Historically, there have been many projects criticized for backfiring, but never has a project been so harshly criticized for it, with so many KOLs participating in the condemnation.

KOL He Bi even added the following description to his personal profile: “Notice: Backpack is a scam exchange, a scam group, do not use it, be careful of being deceived.”

I. Successful KOL Marketing Case

The rise of Backpack was once seen as a textbook marketing case. Founded by former FTX executives and backed by the strong endorsement of the Mad Lads NFT community, combined with its claimed “compliance” and “high performance,” Backpack enjoyed an aura from the very beginning.

According to RootData, Backpack secured $37 million in funding within two years of its establishment, with investors including Placeholder, Jump Crypto, Robot Ventures, Wintermute, Multicoin Capital, Hashed, Delphi Digital, and other star institutions.

In early 2024, when announcing the launch of the first phase of the Pre-Season event, Backpack adopted the logic of “trading volume equals points.” At that time, market sentiment was extremely high, and the KOL network greatly facilitated Backpack’s expansion.

In the following one to two years, numerous crypto KOLs published “nanny-level tutorials” about Backpack, covering how to register and complete KYC, how to trade to increase points, how to use multiple accounts to enhance earnings expectations, how to use referral links to reduce costs, and more.

Many KOLs embedded exclusive invitation links in their content, earning income through commission rebates, traffic sharing, and other means. This model had been validated in several previous projects and gradually evolved into a “semi-industrialized” traffic arbitrage path. In this envisioned scenario, the higher the user’s trading volume and corresponding fees, the more points they would earn, and consequently, the more airdrop tokens they would receive.

Under the strong endorsement of KOLs, countless investors and studios paid high fees to engage in wash trading to chase high airdrops. Within this dissemination structure, Backpack’s user growth exhibited a clear characteristic: users did not enter purely based on product value but were driven by “airdrop expectations.”

II. Backstabbing the “Community”?

However, with the release of the link to check airdrop quantities, the expectations of all opportunistic groups were suddenly shattered.

In terms of results, Backpack implemented a strict “one person, one account” determination strategy. If a single device or IP operated multiple accounts, all those accounts would be deemed “witch” accounts, ultimately leading to almost all opportunistic groups receiving nothing, especially within the Chinese community.

For example, anymose and its team, which contributed over $4 billion in trading volume to Backpack by participating in multiple point activities and actively recruiting, found all their accounts classified as “witches.”

0x Yu Xi commented that this incident can be likened to the Eight-Nation Alliance invading China in crypto; the contributions of the Chinese community were not the least but certainly among the top, yet they are labelled “witches.” No one is afraid of backfiring losses, but such pure provocation is intolerable.

“Backpack is the project where I’ve spent the most time, energy, and money in the crypto space. What should have been a celebration for supporters turned into an absurd farce, and my understanding of the lower limits has continually expanded. From what I’ve learned through communication, the witch hunting primarily targeted Chinese accounts, with scores likely exceeding 60 million. Many large accounts were mistakenly killed. I cannot understand Backpack’s choice to stab the Chinese community in the back,” said KOL Linshan Lynn, expressing his extreme dissatisfaction.

Meta Monkey explained his multi-account operations in a post on X, stating it was mainly due to the needs of arbitrage trading, as the capital efficiency of multiple accounts is higher and helps avoid hitting the trading volume limits restricted by commission ratios. He had no intention of playing this cat-and-mouse game with the project team, so he did not isolate his accounts and even proactively mentioned his multi-account operations to the project team.

However, the ultimate result left him immensely disappointed. “I don’t blame the project team for the price difference; after all, I’ve invested in plenty of trash projects. One more doesn’t matter, and I accept the gamble,” Meta Monkey said. “But the issue is, according to the rules of the industry, if you can’t create any economic value, at least consider the emotional value? Yet their choice is: not to care, not to respect. That makes me feel like a clown.”

In response to the overwhelming discontent and criticism, Claire, the head of the Chinese region for Backpack, posted on the 24th stating that the strict witch judgment policy was due to the compliance team’s obsession with rules in Europe and the U.S. An appeal channel will be opened next, and users operating 3 or fewer accounts on a single device who are deemed witches will have over 50% of their points refunded after manual verification. Additionally, the team will launch a secondary market targeted token buyback in the coming days to specifically compensate eligible users.

However, the external impression of Backpack’s “malicious” actions has already spread. Its token BP price has dropped below $0.20 since its issuance, with a single-day decline exceeding 33%, and the FDV is only $200 million, far below previous market expectations.

Once a fundamental crack in trust appears, the cost Backpack must pay to repair it may far exceed the profits previously “harvested” through transaction fees.