Keybase ended its Stellar Lumens airdrop after just 90 days due to spam attacks. The messaging platform received 2 billion XLM tokens to distribute over 20 months, but spam bots forced early termination with only 300 million XLM distributed instead.
Keybase, an encrypted messaging service, was forced to terminate its Stellar Lumens airdrop program several months ahead of schedule due to overwhelming spam and fake account creation. The Stellar Foundation had announced plans to distribute 2 billion XLM tokens to Keybase users over 20 months, valued at over $120 million at the time. However, after less than 90 days, a surge of fraudulent accounts flooded the platform with spam, unwanted alerts, and scam messages, degrading service quality for legitimate users. Keybase attempted mitigation measures including spam reporting tools and user blocking features, but the spam volume proved unmanageable. The airdrop concluded with only 300 million XLM distributed, a fraction of the original 2 billion token allocation.