Recently, I've been looking into the airdrop controversy surrounding Backpack, and this is definitely worth discussing. The TGE launched at the end of March was originally highly anticipated by the community, but it ended up crashing, with a circulating market cap now only over $38 million, and the price has been falling steadily since opening.

What’s even more heartbreaking is the anti-wolf wave. Many users found their points being drastically reduced or even reset to zero, including long-term active retail investors who were on the whitelist, as well as large traders with top trading volumes. The Backpack Chinese community became a major casualty zone, with many KOLs and big investors complaining in the group—some with $4 billion in trading volume being labeled as 100% wolves, others who spent over 800 hours and traded more than $1.5 billion only received half of the airdrop. Behind this are real costs in funds and time, yet they were all ultimately deemed wolves.

The most frustrating part is that Backpack’s criteria for wolf detection have never been made public. The official statement is just “to purify the environment and reward genuine users,” but what constitutes non-genuine behavior, what the logic for judgment is, and where the boundaries lie, have never been clearly explained. Even the punishment based on collective sitting is quite controversial—some community leaders responsible for onboarding new users not only got cleaned themselves but also had their invited genuine users affected.

Under pressure from public opinion, Backpack quickly opened an appeal channel. The official later explained that “single person, single account” is the absolute bottom line for the anti-wolf team, and Chinese-speaking users are indeed more affected due to different usage habits. Backpack announced the implementation of the “3-Number Rule”: users operating on the same device with three or fewer accounts and judged as wolves can, after an appeal and verification, recover more than 50% of their points. The team also plans to buy back tokens on the secondary market and provide targeted compensation to eligible users.

Honestly, for those who once invested wholeheartedly, these remedies might only partially recover losses. Once trust is broken, it’s very hard to rebuild.

Interestingly, after issuing tokens, Backpack chose to bet on the listing narrative to boost confidence. The CEO previously stated that until the product reaches “escape velocity,” no internal personnel should profit from tokens, and their answer is an IPO in the US. According to reports, Backpack is raising a new round of funding with a pre-money valuation of $1 billion. Regarding token unlocking, 37.5% will be gradually unlocked before the IPO based on milestones, and the remaining 37.5% will be locked until at least one year after the IPO.

What’s more attractive is that Backpack is offering 20% equity to users who stake BP tokens for at least one year, giving them the chance to exchange it for company equity at a fixed ratio. The platform has also launched an on-chain IPO share allocation feature. However, details about the token-to-equity conversion—such as the form of exchange, rights, and schedule—have not yet been disclosed, which has some worried it might be another round of PUA—locking users in first and then slowly fulfilling promises.

The CEO also admitted that going public might happen very soon or very slowly, or perhaps not at all, but they will do their best regardless. Behind this airdrop controversy, in fact, reflects the difficulties crypto projects face in a bear market and the trust game with their communities.