Excluded from cryptocurrency airdrop, a lot of money, what recourse

5 points by applesapl ↗ HN
In 2020 Flare announced an airdrop

more info:

https://dailyhodl.com/2021/07/03/flare-unveils-plan-to-send-100000000000-spark-tokens-to-xrp-holders-in-massive-airdrop/

My address was eligible for the airdrop and I had completed all the necessary steps to claim it

A second airdrop, songbird, was unveiled., which dropped 2 weeks ago.

https://flare.xyz/introducing-songbird/

I saw that I did not get any songbird. After contacting support, a week later I eventually learn that my XRP address was added to an exclusion list. This means I get nothing. The total amount that I am owed is easily in the thousands of dollars (tens of thousands of dollars, possibly even $100k depending on price) over the duration of the airdrop (which is over a three-year period):

https://flare.xyz/further-information-on-the-spark-token-distribution/

It says:

Other than Ripple inc and the non-participating exchanges, there are a few groups that are completely excluded from the distribution. These are Jed McCaleb and accounts that are known to have received XRP as a result of fraud, theft and scams.

So I am guessing they assume my XRP was fraudulently obtained, so I get nothing. However I never engaged in fraud. I received XRP in 2020 as payment, but how was I supposed to know at the time something was wrong? That is not the issue, the issue is I am excluded for a lot of money.

So what should my next step be. The holding company is in the UK:

https://www.xrpchat.com/topic/38453-company-incorporation-info-for-flare-networks/

I am not even sure what the assessed damages will be given that the airdrop has not actually commenced yet, or if there is any way to proceed legally.

2 comments

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Sounds like your target would be whoever made the fraud part of the exclusion list and included your address on it. I would assume that they bought that list from a blockchain analysis company.
That's why I always promote using not only separate, clean address for every new transaction, but also new wallet completely.

Unfortunately many wallets, including hardware wallets making this non-default, difficult or outright not possible.

Only very few support this concept well.