Robin Guards, an NFT project, says it paid roughly 200 crypto influencers to promote its collection and sold only a few hundred NFTs as a result. The project argues the outcome shows that man
Robin Guards, an NFT project, says it paid roughly 200 crypto influencers to promote its collection and sold only a few hundred NFTs as a result. The project argues the outcome shows that many paid promoters rely on bought followers and fake engagement. The claims have not been independently verified.
According to the project, the influencers had more than 10 million followers combined. Each of them posted about the Robin Guards collection, which was priced at $5 per NFT. Robin Guards says every one of the accounts scored at least 400 on Sorsa, a tool used to rate crypto accounts on X.
In an article published on 2 November, @RobinGuards shared screenshots that it says show influencers trading likes in group chats and a seller offering verified followers in bulk. The project says the dispute began after one influencer accused it of scamming, an accusation it denies.
Robin Guards also set out advice for other teams. It says projects should check a promoter's reach-to-view ratio, look at who replies under their posts, and ask for conversion results from past campaigns rather than screenshots of impressions. In its view, if the same 40 or so accounts appear under every post, that is a sign of recycled engagement. It describes the influencers it paid as having no real audience and no buyers. These are the project's own assessments, and the influencers have not been quoted here.
Sorsa, formerly known as TweetScout, is a crypto analytics tool built on public data from X. According to its own FAQ, the score reflects how many influential crypto people, projects and VC-related accounts follow an account, and how influential those followers are. Sorsa says the score counts who follows an account, not how many. It also says it excludes accounts showing follow-for-follow or mass-following patterns from its calculations.
That design matters for reading the project's argument. The score measures the quality of an account's follower network. It is not a direct test of whether engagement is real or whether a post will convert into sales. A score above 400 sits below Sorsa's 500 to 999 band, which Sorsa describes as accounts followed by a solid crypto circle. Sorsa also offers separate tools, including AI-powered bot detection, alongside its influence scoring.
Robin Guards has not published sales data that outside parties can check. The figures on payments, reach and NFT sales should be treated as the project's own account until supporting data is made public.
The episode follows earlier scrutiny of paid promotion in the sector. Cointelegraph reported that the investigator ZachXBT accused the influencer Professor Crypto of using bots to inflate follower and view counts, which the influencer had yet to publicly address at the time. Separately, Blocmates noted that a leaked spreadsheet from ZachXBT showed more than 200 influencers took paid promotions, often without disclosure, with some charging up to $70,000 per post.
Those cases do not confirm Robin Guards' claims about its own campaign. They do show that how to judge influencer quality remains a live issue for NFT and token projects that pay for attention.
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