The startup Apriori, which is supported by the venture capital firm YZi Labs, is now the subject of an investigation following the recent airdrop of its APR token, with an analysis by DL News identifying potential signs of a Sybil attack and possible insider trading. The report indicates that approximately 80% of the tokens distributed on the BNB Chain network on October 23 were acquired by a group of more than 5,800 interconnected wallets. This pattern of activity is highly characteristic of a Sybil attack, a manoeuvre where a single user utilizes thousands of distinct addresses to illegally maximize their profit from a distribution event. The suspicions are further compounded by the fact that these wallets were meticulously prepared for the distribution ahead of the public announcement. Unidentified actors funded these addresses with BNB tokens necessary to cover transaction fees between October 19 and 20. However, the Apriori team did not publicly announce the airdrop on the BNB Chain until October 22, reports The WP Times with reference to dlnews.

Further analysis revealed that all 5,800 addresses received their initial BNB funding from a highly concentrated group of only 13 identical source wallets. The eligibility for the airdrop among these addresses was established through the purchase of valueless test tokens from Apriori. Crucially, prior to these transactions, the vast majority of the recipient addresses lacked any significant transaction history, suggesting they were created solely for the purpose of receiving the distribution. The Apriori project had previously successfully raised $30 million from notable investors, including YZi Labs, HashKey Capital, Pantera Capital, and Primitive Ventures. The development team of the startup comprises former engineers from prestigious financial and crypto institutions, including Jump Trading, Coinbase, and Citadel Securities. Despite the ongoing investigation and the cloud of controversy, the APR token was trading at $0.28 at the time of writing, showing a marginal gain of 1.5% over a 24-hour period, according to CoinGecko. The project is currently being watched by the crypto community, particularly after Monad, an EVM-compatible L1-platform, opened its own portal for claiming native MON tokens in October.

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