The leading Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution Optimism announced it has lowered the number of wallets that are eligible to receive its upcoming airdrop and have identified airdrop farmers.
Optimism has eliminated 17,000 addresses that it believes are traders attempting to defraud the system. The team also recovered over 14 million OP tokens.
This happened in response to airdrop farming, often known as a sybil attack, which is carried out by people who think a project might do an airdrop.
To do so, they create a large number of wallets and use the same application across all of them, trying to make a fortune if each wallet receives the airdrop.
The tokens that would have been given to these wallets will be redistributed to the remaining eligible wallets, according to Optimism.
Several past crypto initiatives have been hit by airdrop farming. Divergence Ventures used a large number of addresses to try to rig the Ribbon Finance airdrop, a project in which it had previously invested.
Also Read: Optimism Announces Launch of DAO and Token Airdrop
Divergence Ventures made $3.2 million through this method at first, but after it was exposed on Twitter and a backlash developed, it refunded the money.
Optimism announced its DAO and token airdrop in April, with 250,000 eligible addresses eligible for it. It is only giving out 5% of its total supply of tokens, with the remaining 14% set aside for future airdrops.
This month, Optimism announced the OP Stimpack launch, and also the establishment of a $231M Public Offering and an airdrop for builders.