Vine Protocol Airdrop Scam

Notice: This page is a freshly imported case study from the original repository. The original content was in a different format, and may not have relevant information for all sections. Please help restructure the content by moving information from the 'About' section to other sections, and add any missing information or sources you can find. If you are new here, please read General Tutorial on Wikis or Anatomy of a Case Study for help getting started.

Vine Protocol

Vine Protocol created a nice whitepaper, website, and proposed to launch a new decentralized finance platform.

If you performed some steps, you were supposedly set up to receive 500 of the free VINE tokens.

However, when it came time to actually launch, they asked people to send 0.1BNB in order to receive the airdrop, while others were told they had to do 5 referrals.

It is unknown how many people were tricked into sending their funds.

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

About Vine Protocol

"The #1 AMM and yield farm on Binance Smart Chain."

"Vine Protocol is a multi-chain protocol for liquidity mining, market making, DeFi token offering and DEX aggregation. It provides all these services at zero cost to the users that have enabled transaction fee mining." "Vine Protocol is the next step forward in Dex Defi protocols, designed to be the next evolution. Taking Binance chain’s liquidity focused strategy."

"75.30% of Genesis Vine Protocol (VINE) resources are dedicated to members of the Vine Protocol community." "VINE will be available through four liquidity mining pools: VINE-BNB, VINE-ETH, VINE-USDT and VINE-WBTC."

"VINE Protocol is airdropping 500 VINE to airdrop participants." "Vine Protocol is launching a crypto Airdrop program to community. Join the Airdrop campaign and complete tasks, You will earn free 500 VINE Tokens with an estimate value of $250."

"Inbounds received that indicated as protention high risks regarding a project named Vine Protocol. The project claimed to have been audited by CertiK, which is misleading, and not true at all."

"Beware that Vine-Protocol has widely publicized a huge airdrop, that depended upon the word having been widely spread."

"Theoretically today was payday, to those who made the appropriate sharings, and referrals but right now they are presenting a very scammy strategy, claiming they couldnt send the promised tokens due to a smart chain problem asking people to instead send then 0.1bnb."

"I have no idea whether this is actually a legit aidrop, and I do not wish to spread any FUD but, anybody who asks you to send them crypto to send you crypto is, at best, shady, at worst straight scam."

"I signed up for the aidrop completing every step- sharing their tweet on my twitter and all. One of the steps was signing up to their telegram group - fine done. Weeks later - they posted in the telegram group that they had "forgotten" a step and needed everyone who they had already told was eligible for their airdrop to now get 5 referrals to be eligible."

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

Known history of when and how the service was started.
What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
How were people recruited to participate?
Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

There could be more than one section here. If the same platform is involved with multiple incidents, then it can be linked to a main article page.

The Reality

This sections is included if a case involved deception or information that was unknown at the time. Examples include:

When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - Vine Protocol Airdrop Scam
Date	Event	Description
April 30th, 2021 12:00:00 AM	First Event	This is an expanded description of what happened and the impact. If multiple lines are necessary, add them here.

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost is unknown.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

How did the various parties involved (firm, platform, management, and/or affected individual(s)) deal with the events? Were services shut down? Were announcements made? Were groups formed?