Optimism's fake airdrop flood: 'claim' tokens were 44% of September's transfers

01 · The tokenFifteen million wallets, one name

If you opened a wallet on Optimism in September, you may have found a token called "www.soalto.xyz ✅ claim". Nobody claimed it. It arrived on its own, and so did copies in about 15 million other addresses.

It was one of 90 such tokens that month. Each carried a website in its name and a word like "claim" or "reward". We counted every one on the chain this year to see how big the flood is and what it costs its senders.

02 · The trickHow a fake airdrop token works

An airdrop is a free handout of a new token. A fake one copies the look. The token itself is worthless, and its name is the message: go to this website to claim your reward. Sending tokens to wallets that never asked for them is called a push. Wallets show token names to their owners, so the push is an ad that lands in every inbox at once.

We did not visit these sites, and you should not either. Sites promoted this way are a common route for wallet drainers. They ask you to connect a wallet and sign a transaction, and that signature is how the money leaves.

03 · The scaleFrom almost nothing to 44% of transfers

Before July the flood was small on Optimism, under three million pushes in any month and under a million in June. In July it jumped to about 89 million. In September it reached 275 million, 44% of every transfer on the chain.

Other chains get spam too. What stands out on Optimism is the share. From July to September, a third to nearly half of everything moving on the chain was an ad for a website.

04 · The sitesA few sites, many tokens

September's 90 tokens named just 15 websites. Senders make many tokens for the same site, up to 18 for one of them, so one site can reach the same wallets again and again. The top three sites took more than half of the month's pushes.

The biggest single tokens each reached some 15 million wallets, and seven of them reached more than ten million. No real airdrop in our 2026 study came close. The biggest paid about 279,000 wallets.

05 · The costA millionth of a dollar per wallet

Sending on Optimism is cheap, and a push is cheaper still, because one transaction can hit hundreds of wallets at once. We pulled the full fee, including the part paid to Ethereum, for a sample of the spam transactions.

Every push we checked cost under a millionth of a dollar. At that rate, a dollar buys more than a million and a half pushes, and the whole month's 275 million would have cost under $200. With costs that low, the senders only need a tiny share of recipients to take the bait for it to pay.

06 · The sendersA few dozen signers did the work

In September the spam came from 418 signers, the wallets that sign and pay for each transaction. Of those, 57 sent a thousand or more transactions each, and between them they sent 96% of all spam transactions.

Most of the rest sent only a handful. Many tokens push themselves: the token contract hands out copies to a list of addresses in each transaction, so there is no separate sender to trace. The names and the reward wording repeat across all of them.

07 · The numbersWhat the flood does to Optimism's stats

Traffic on Optimism rose almost sixfold between June and September. About half of that rise was this spam.

Anyone who reads transfer counts as a sign of real use should take the spam out first. A wallet that receives a spam token has done nothing, and a push to 15 million wallets is the work of one sender. Holder counts can be padded the same way, as we found with memecoins on Robinhood Chain.

08 · Staying safeWhat to do with a token you did not ask for

Ignore it. A token that arrives unasked, with a website in its name, is an ad and very likely bait. Do not visit the site, do not try to sell or swap the token, and do not sign anything a site asks you to sign because of it. Most wallets let you hide such tokens. If you want to check an address or a token first, look at who sent it and to how many wallets, which you can do with the Bitquery MCP.

09 · The answerHow we checked, and what it means

We used Bitquery's archive of Optimism transfers from January 1 to September 29, 2026. Monthly totals count every transfer on the chain. We counted a token as spam when its name or symbol contains a website address or words like "claim", "reward" or "airdrop". One sender also had to move it at least 300 times in a month, so the count is a floor. Fees come from public transaction receipts for a sample of spam transactions, and prices from our price data. This flood is a cousin of the fake tokens that copied real airdrops in our 2026 airdrop scorecard, and of the look-alike addresses in our address poisoning investigation.

So how big is the fake airdrop flood on Optimism? Big enough to be almost half of the chain's traffic in September, and cheap enough that its senders barely pay for it. The tokens cost nothing to receive. The danger is the website in the name.

FAQ

Why did I get a token with a website in its name?

Someone pushed it to millions of wallets at once to advertise a website. On Optimism, tokens like this were 44% of all transfers in September 2026. You did nothing to attract it.

Is it safe to visit the site in a spam token's name?

No. These sites usually ask you to connect a wallet and sign a transaction, and that signature can let someone move your funds. Ignore the token and hide it in your wallet.

Can I sell a spam token?

Do not try. The token has no real market, and interacting with it or its site is how people lose money.

How much does it cost to send spam tokens on Optimism?

Very little. Every push we checked cost under a millionth of a dollar, so a dollar pays for more than a million and a half pushes.