When the Backpack backstabs the community

Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

On March 23, Backpack officially launched its native token $BP and opened the channel for the airdrop of points. This event, originally seen as a landmark in the Solana ecosystem and carrying the hopes of countless users, unexpectedly triggered a strong backlash from the community, falling into a whirlpool of public opinion.

The core issue lies in the distribution of airdropped tokens. Well-known KOLs such as Ice Frog, He Bi, Australian Lion Brother, Professor Feng Wuxiang, Meta Ape, and anymose all stated that their accounts, as well as those of their studios, were judged by the platform as "witch" accounts, resulting in airdrop earnings far below expectations and significant losses.

"Countless small retail investors and I came to Backpack with dreams and hopes. We believed you were a breath of fresh air 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 am really heartbroken," said Little Bear Biscuit.

Historically, many projects have been criticized for backlash against users, but never has a project been so severely condemned for backlash, with so many KOLs participating in the denunciation.

KOL He Bi even added a description in his personal profile: "Warning: Backpack is a scam exchange, a scam group, do not use it, beware 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, along with its claims of "compliance" and "high performance," Backpack was already shining when it launched.

According to RootData, Backpack raised $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.

At the beginning of 2024, during the announcement 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 propelled Backpack's expansion.

In the following year or two, 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 profit expectations, how to use referral links to reduce costs, and more.

Many KOLs embedded exclusive invitation links in their content, achieving profits through commission rebates, traffic sharing, and other methods. 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 the more airdropped tokens they would receive.

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

II. Backstabbing the "Community"?

However, with the release of the link to check the number of airdropped tokens, the expectations of all users were suddenly shattered.

From the results, Backpack adopted a strict "one person, one account" determination strategy. If a single device or IP operated multiple accounts, all those accounts would be regarded as "witch" accounts, ultimately leading to almost all users receiving nothing, especially in the Chinese community.

For example, anymose and its team, which participated in multiple point activities and actively recruited new users, contributed over $4 billion in trading volume to Backpack, but all accounts were judged as "witches."

0x Yu Xi commented that this situation could be likened to the Eight-Nation Alliance invading China in crypto; the Chinese contribution was not the least but at least second, yet almost all were labeled as "witches." No one fears losing money from backlash, but this pure provocation is something no one can tolerate.

"Backpack is the project where I have 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 I have been constantly refreshing my understanding of the limits. From my communications, it seems that the witch hunt mainly targets Chinese users, and the score is likely much more than 60 million. Many large accounts were wrongly killed. I cannot understand Backpack's choice to backstab the Chinese community," KOL Linshan Lynn expressed extreme dissatisfaction.

Meta Ape posted on X explaining his multi-account operations, stating that it was mainly due to the need for arbitrage trading, as the efficiency of fund utilization is higher with multiple accounts, and it can avoid hitting the trading volume cap that limits commission ratios. He disdainfully refused to "play 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.

But the final result still left him extremely disappointed. "I won't blame the project for the price difference; after all, I've invested in many trash projects, and one more doesn't matter, willing to bet and accept the loss," Meta Ape said. "But the problem is, according to the rules of the community, since you can't create any economic value, at least take care of the emotional value, right? And their choice is: not to care, not to respect. That makes me feel like a clown."

In response to the overwhelming dissatisfaction and criticism, Claire, the head of the Chinese region for Backpack, posted on the 24th stating that the strict witch determination policy was due to the compliance team's obsession with rules in Europe and America. They will soon open an appeal channel, and any user operating 3 or fewer accounts on a single device who is judged as a witch will have their points returned by more than 50% after manual verification. Additionally, the team will initiate a targeted token buyback in the secondary market in the coming days to specifically compensate eligible users.

However, the external impression of Backpack's "malicious" behavior has already spread, and its token BP price has fallen below $0.20 since its issuance, with a single-day drop of over 33%, and an FDV of only $200 million, far below previous market expectations.

Once trust experiences a fundamental fracture, the cost Backpack must pay to repair it will likely be far more expensive than the profits previously "harvested" through transaction fees.