Scammers Take Advantage of Telegram Advertisements to Impersonate Monad Claim Portal

Malicious actors have targeted Monad’s official Telegram channel with advertisements that imitate the project’s upcoming claim portal.

In a post on X, Monad co-founder Keone Hon warned users against clicking ads in their official channel. He stated that attackers have purchased Telegram ads that appeared in the project’s official announcement channel, which is typically reserved solely for Monad’s updates.

“It’s shocking that Telegram would insert content directly into a channel that usually only contains messages from one source,” Hon remarked.

The attack occurred just before a highly anticipated Monad airdrop, set to begin at 1:00 pm UTC on Tuesday. With scammers trying to take advantage of heightened user interest before the airdrop claim portal opens, Hon reminded users that there’s no need to act quickly.

“Please don’t feel rushed and always verify thoroughly before taking any action,” Hon cautioned the community about these phishing attempts. He assured users that there is no need to hurry as the portal will be accessible for a full three weeks.

Monad achieves $7 billion FDV on Hyperliquid ahead of its airdrop

Before its official token generation event, the yet-to-launch MON token is already trading on Hyperliquid’s perpetual futures market at approximately $0.07, suggesting a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of around $7 billion based on its total supply of 100 billion tokens.

This early pricing underscores investor enthusiasm surrounding its mainnet release and its potential to compete with other top-tier blockchain networks.

Monad is a layer-1 blockchain built to be Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible while enhancing scalability and throughput. The network claims to process up to 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) with near-instant finality, achieved through parallel execution and an optimized consensus layer.

Monad asserts that it has successfully addressed the blockchain trilemma, the theory that a network can typically attain just two of three critical features: scalability, security, and decentralization.

Related: BNB Chain’s official X account hacked, CZ warns of phishing links

Fake ads breach Telegram’s guidelines

Although the fraudulent ads made their way into Telegram’s ecosystem, they are in clear violation of several of the platform’s Ad Policies and Guidelines.

This includes Telegram’s rules against deceptive advertising, content manipulation, spam software, and promoting harmful financial products or services.

Telegram specifically prohibits phishing links in its advertisements. “Ads must not endorse phishing, including services that deceive users into providing personal or other information,” Telegram stated.

While the platform has established proper policies, the Monad incident highlights the necessity for more rigorous ad vetting processes to thwart phishing attacks.