Irys Airdrop Draws Concern After One Entity Captures 20% of Supply

The layer-1 blockchain Irys is facing scrutiny after blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps identified approximately 900 wallets, showing no prior on-chain activity, that collectively claimed about 20% of the token's airdrop allocation, valued around $4 million. These linked addresses consolidated their IRYS tokens and began transferring them to the Bitget exchange, suggesting an intent to liquidate and potentially exert significant sell-side pressure. Following this disclosure, the IRYS price declined by 16%. While Bubblemaps found no direct link between the wallet cluster and the Irys team, the incident highlights the vulnerability of airdrops to coordinated actors using script-generated wallets to capture large allocations, leading to centralization risks and distorted price discovery for the protocol, which aims to be an "on-chain AWS."

(Source：BeInCrypto)