LunarCrush: Spam in Crypto Sector Increases 4,000% in Two Years

For years, spam and bots have been the bane of anyone using the internet, but recently this digital scourge has dramatically increased activity in the crypto space.

Crypto intelligence provider LunarCrush revealed a staggering 3,894% increase in spam in the crypto space. The firm has been collecting cryptocurrency-specific social data since 2019, and says spam is not only at an all-time high, but also “the fastest-growing metric on social media.”

The findings, published in a report on May 25, said "there are more spam accounts than you might think". Therefore, it is often a challenge for software to detect and flag spam.

Twitter, the social media platform of choice for the crypto industry, is riddled with spam and bots. According to LunarCrush, the amount of spam on Twitter has increased an estimated 1,374% over the past two years.

LunarCrush CEO Joe Vezzani told Quantum Economics founder Matti Greenspan in his encrypted newsletter:

"With a Web2 platform like Twitter, there is a direct incentive to turn a blind eye to fake accounts because it increases the value of their platform."

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He added that what makes tokenized Web3 platforms such as Aave's Lens protocol or Orbis different is that they want as many real users as possible to hold the asset, rather than trying to extract value from the community.

Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk's acquisition of the platform was put on hold earlier this month, pending further details to back up Twitter's claim that spam and fake accounts accounted only less than 5% of traffic.

Musk plans to crack down on the spam bots that plague the platform, and suggested that the company's claim of 95% real users is too high.

Purging a bot account will reduce the follower count of most real accounts. An estimate by SparkToro suggests that Musk could lose half of his 95 million followers. Earlier this month, the software company conducted an in-depth analysis that reported that nearly 20 percent of all active Twitter accounts are fake or spammers.

Until Musk succeeds in driving spammers out of Twitter, users of the platform and other social media sites must be extra vigilant against a rising tide of crypto scams and spam, none of which appear to be in control.