In early September, when the entire network's funds and attention were attracted by a certain prominent political figure's token, the on-chain data analysis community was again thrown into chaos.

Someone compiled a complete bill of paid promotions by overseas KOLs. This spreadsheet detailed the transaction records of several well-known accounts in the English-speaking community conducting paid promotions for crypto projects on social media— the number of participating KOLs is considerable, and the total promotional expenses exceeded one million USD. The price for a single tweet is also outrageous, starting at $1,500 for the low end, with big influencers demanding up to $60,000 per post.

The most glaring issue is: among the KOLs on this list, fewer than five accounts actually marked their promotional posts with an "ad" label when posting. In other words, most of the recommendations you see are actually "paid articles," but you can't tell — they look just like genuine shares from big influencers.

Later, someone did a more detailed analysis of this raw data and uncovered a bunch of shady operations.

**The same wallet can scam two promotional fees**

The most straightforward trick is using multiple accounts. Some wallet addresses appear repeatedly on the list but are associated with different KOL accounts — meaning the same person uses multiple accounts to promote the same project, resulting in the project being scammed out of promotional fees two or even more times.

For example, one account received $8,000 for four tweets, while another related account managed to get another payment from the same project. This kind of scheme is blatant theft from the project team.