Backpack founder Armani Ferrante has answered four of the biggest complaints surrounding the BP token since its March 23 TGE, pushing back on OTC cash-out allegations while conceding that the exchange’s anti-sybil enforcement was handled too simply. His comments addressed OTC trading claims, differing treatment for Mad Lads NFT holders, the sybil cleanup, and criticism of BP’s FDV.
Ferrante calls OTC exit narrative “fake news”
On the accusation that he used OTC channels to cash out, Ferrante took the hardest line. He said the claim was “fake news.” According to his account, a buyer approached him seeking more tokens through an OTC deal, and he and the team helped facilitate that transaction. He said the seller was not him and that he was not unloading his own allocation.
Ferrante also acknowledged why the market reacted the way it did. Other crypto projects have used OTC structures to let insiders exit positions, leaving traders sensitive to similar setups. Backpack had previously stated that founders, executives, team members, and VCs received no direct token allocation at TGE, while team tokens remain locked for at least one year.
Mad Lads dispute centers on who counts as a long-term holder
Another flashpoint came from the Mad Lads NFT community. Holders who owned Mad Lads before the TGE kept their Backpack VIP status, while people who bought after the TGE did not receive the same treatment.
Ferrante said Mad Lads had been tied to Backpack’s path from the beginning and that its design choices were built around long-term holders. He said later buyers may have entered with different assumptions about what the NFT represented and what benefits came with it. He called that friction understandable, but said the team would not rewrite commitments made to long-time supporters in order to satisfy new buyers.
Backpack concedes mistakes in sybil cleanup
His tone shifted on the anti-sybil issue. Ferrante said the goal was to protect retail users by stopping participants from splitting activity across multiple accounts to gain an unfair points advantage. Then came the admission: the enforcement process was too simplistic and failed to account for the complexity of the community structure.
Backpack had earlier said its investigation identified and clawed back more than 50 million “fake points.” Appeals have since been opened. Users with fewer than three accounts can recover more than 50% of their tokens after review, and Backpack also plans to buy back tokens on the secondary market to compensate eligible users affected by the process.
FDV criticism met with a long-term incentive argument
On complaints that BP launched with an elevated FDV, Ferrante said short-term price action and fully diluted valuation were not what mattered. He argued that the token model was built in an “extreme” way to force long-term alignment: if the token falls to zero and the company fails, the team gets nothing. In his framing, team upside depends on lasting success rather than near-term market moves.
BP launched its TGE on March 23 with a total supply of 1 billion tokens. At launch, 25% of supply, or 250 million tokens, was released. Of that amount, 240 million went to points holders and 10 million to Mad Lads NFT holders. Ferrante’s comments were made in public as his own response to the controversy, and whether they will settle the debate remains up to the community.