Newly-launched non-fungible token (NFT) project Moonbirds has been hit with controversy, with some wondering if there was a potential raffle manipulation.

Etherescan data shows that one user created more than 400 “accounts to Sybil Attack the Moonbirds raffle,” said the pseudonymous crypto researcher Zachxbt. The user managed to win more than 50 NFTs.

Sybil attacks occur when individuals/small groups act as large groups of individuals by creating multiple addresses.

Meanwhile, Harri, a developer at Moonbirds, said one day before the launch that they have removed entries of “14,649 bots and sneaksters,” leaving 32,218 candidates for a spot in the raffle.

“We ended up setting higher thresholds than we first anticipated and did a LOT of manual checks to really try to minimise the legit people taken out by mistake. Some small scale cheating will have gone under our radar but we thought it was worth it to avoid false positives.” Harri added.

Some users noted that the team could have removed a lot of bots by “analyzing the flow of funds and wallet activity.”

Launched on Saturday, Moonbirds is a collection of 10,000 utility-enabled PFPs (profile pictures), each with randomly distributed features. The project is the first NFT drop by tech entrepreneur Kevin Rose’s PROOF Collective, a private members-only collective of 1,000 dedicated NFT collectors and artists.

PROOF Collective released 7,875 of the PFPs for sale via an allowlist, which was formed via a raffle process. The NFTs went for sale for an ETH 2.5 (USD 7,630) mint price. However, the collection has since burst in popularity and its floor price has increased to ETH 18 (USD 54,930), according to CryptoSlam.

Holders of the PROOF Collective NFT membership pass, which starts at a price of above ETH 97 (about USD 296,000) on secondary markets, were also granted two free mints.

Nevertheless, part of the collection’s success is attributed to its utility. Each of the 10,000 NFTs would act as a key to “dedicated channels (known as Parliament channels) inside the private Proof discord,” according to Martin Hyu, a member of the collective.

Also, the token holders will have exclusive access to Moonbird-related drops, Parliament meetups, events in real life, and upcoming PROOF projects, Hyu said, adding that it will also enable holders to step into the PROOF metaverse called “Project Highrise.”

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