Scammers Use Telegram Advertisements to Imitate Monad Claim Portal

Malicious individuals targeted Monad’s official Telegram channel with ads that imitate the project’s upcoming claim portal.

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

“It’s astonishing that Telegram would allow content to be pushed directly into a channel that otherwise features only one party’s content,” Hon remarked.

The attack occurred just before a highly anticipated Monad airdrop, which is set to launch at 1:00 pm UTC on Tuesday. With scammers trying to take advantage of the increased user interest before the airdrop claim portal opens, Hon reminded users that they don’t need to rush.

“Do not act in haste, and always triple-check before proceeding with anything,” Hon advised, cautioning the community against phishing attempts. He reassured users that there’s no need to hurry, as the portal will remain open for three weeks.

Monad achieves $7 billion FDV on Hyperliquid prior to its airdrop

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

The initial pricing reflects investor excitement regarding its mainnet launch and its potential to rival other high-performance blockchain networks.

Monad is a layer-1 blockchain engineered for Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility while enhancing scalability and throughput. The network claims to handle up to 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) with near-instant finality due to its parallel execution and optimized consensus mechanism.

Monad asserts that it has solved the blockchain trilemma, which states that a network can usually attain only two out of three key attributes: scalability, security, and decentralization.

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

Fake ads breach Telegram policies

While the fraudulent ads infiltrated Telegram’s infrastructure, they clearly contravene multiple platform Ad Policies and Guidelines.

This encompasses Telegram’s standards against deceptive advertising, content manipulation, spam software, and the promotion of harmful financial products or services.

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

Although the platform has appropriate policies in place, the Monad situation highlights the need for more robust ad vetting processes to thwart phishing attacks.

Cointelegraph reached out to Telegram’s press inquiry channel but only received an automated reply.