Back in 2021, Wicrypt made noise with a bold idea: WNT tokens earned by sharing your home Wi-Fi through a physical device. They called it an "NFT & Device Drop" - a phrase that made it sound like a limited-edition crypto giveaway. But what really happened? Was it an airdrop? A hardware launch? Or something else entirely?
It Wasn’t an Airdrop - It Was a Token Sale
Wicrypt didn’t give away WNT tokens for free. There was no "NFT & Device Drop" in the way people think of airdrops - like claiming free tokens by connecting a wallet. Instead, they sold devices. And you had to buy one to even get access to the token rewards.
The project’s core model was simple: buy a Wicrypt router for $99, plug it into your internet, and earn WNT tokens based on how much bandwidth you shared. The token wasn’t distributed through a claim page or snapshot. It was earned over time - only if you kept the device running. That’s not an airdrop. That’s a hardware-based mining model, similar to Helium’s hotspots.
Wicrypt’s team, led by former Microsoft and Google engineers, pitched it as a solution for regions with expensive or unreliable internet. Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya were early targets. The idea was that if 10,000 people shared their excess bandwidth, they could create a decentralized mesh network that lowered costs for everyone. But here’s the catch: you had to pay upfront to join.
The Device: What You Actually Got
The Wicrypt device wasn’t just a Wi-Fi router. It was a small, ARM-based box with dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz and 5GHz), gigabit Ethernet, and built-in blockchain firmware. It connected to your home internet and then broadcasted a secondary network - one that others could connect to, and you’d earn WNT for every MB shared.
Unlike Helium’s LoRaWAN hotspots that mine for IoT devices, Wicrypt focused on everyday mobile users. If someone nearby connected to your secondary Wi-Fi, you earned. The more people used it, the more you made. Theoretically, it was smart. Realistically? It had problems.
Users reported overheating in tropical climates. Some devices rebooted every few days. One Reddit user in Lagos said they earned about $3.50 a day - but only after fixing the device twice a week. Another complained their device stopped working after a power surge. The hardware wasn’t rugged. It wasn’t designed for 24/7 use in high-heat environments.
Tokenomics: Locked for Three Years
Wicrypt raised $1.5 million in private funding in August 2021. The WNT token launched on Cardano’s OccamRazer platform in October 2021. But here’s where it got tricky: 70% of the total supply was locked up in long-term vesting schedules. Some allocations were released over 36 months.
That meant if you bought a device and started earning WNT, you couldn’t sell it for years. The token had no real exchange liquidity. By late 2022, it had vanished from major DEXs. CoinGecko delisted it in 2025. There’s no price. No trading volume. Just a token that exists on the blockchain but can’t be moved.
Even if you earned 500 WNT over six months, you couldn’t cash out. And since the project stopped updating its GitHub repo after March 2022, there’s no chance of future development. The network didn’t scale. The app stopped working. The community faded.
Why It Failed: The Hardware Trap
Wicrypt’s fatal flaw was assuming people would buy a $99 device just to earn crypto. Most people don’t care about decentralizing Wi-Fi. They care about cheap, stable internet. If your Wi-Fi is slow, you upgrade your plan - you don’t buy a box to share it.
Compare that to Helium. Helium’s hotspots didn’t require users to change their internet usage. They just plugged in a device and let it mine for LoRaWAN devices - mostly IoT sensors, not human traffic. Wicrypt asked users to give up bandwidth they actually used. That’s a harder sell.
Also, shipping delays killed momentum. Users waited 6-8 weeks for devices. By the time they got them, the hype was gone. Telegram groups dropped from 8,500 members to under 1,200 by 2025. Support vanished. The knowledge base had 47 articles - but none on how to fix a dead device.
Who Was Left Behind?
Most of the early adopters were in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. They weren’t crypto speculators. They were everyday users trying to save money on data. Some reported earning enough to cover a month’s mobile data plan. Others lost money because their device broke and they couldn’t get a replacement.
Trustpilot reviews from 2021 showed a 3.2/5 average. The biggest complaints? "Not available in my country" and "device stopped working." No one complained about the token not being worth anything - because they never got to trade it.
Wicrypt’s model worked in theory: reward bandwidth sharing with crypto. But it ignored human behavior. People won’t maintain a device for pennies a day. Especially if it overheats, crashes, or ships late.
What’s Left Today?
As of 2026, Wicrypt is effectively dead. The website is offline. The GitHub repo hasn’t been touched in over two years. The token has no market. The devices? Some are still sitting in homes in Lagos, Accra, and Nairobi - powered on, earning nothing, and gathering dust.
There’s no official announcement of shutdown. No refund policy. No community vote. Just silence.
If you bought a Wicrypt device, you’re not alone. But you’re also not getting your money back. The project didn’t fail because of bad tech. It failed because it misunderstood the market. Crypto can’t fix broken infrastructure if users aren’t willing to invest time, money, and patience.
Lessons from Wicrypt
- Don’t confuse hardware sales with airdrops. If you pay to join, it’s not a giveaway.
- Tokenomics with 36-month locks are a red flag for retail users.
- Blockchain projects that rely on consumer hardware need durability, not just code.
- Community trust dies fast when support vanishes.
- Decentralized networks can’t thrive without real, consistent usage - not just theoretical earning.
Wicrypt’s story isn’t unique. Dozens of projects tried to monetize bandwidth, sensors, or home networks. Most vanished. The ones that survived - like Helium - had massive marketing budgets, global supply chains, and clear use cases. Wicrypt had ambition. But not enough execution.
Was the Wicrypt NFT & Device Drop a real airdrop?
No. It was not an airdrop. Wicrypt required users to purchase a physical device for $99 to earn WNT tokens. There was no free claim process, wallet snapshot, or NFT minting. The "NFT & Device Drop" name was marketing language - not a technical description of how tokens were distributed.
Can I still earn WNT tokens today?
No. The Wicrypt network stopped processing earnings in 2022. The servers are offline, the app no longer connects, and the token has been delisted from all exchanges. Even if your device is still plugged in, it’s not generating any rewards.
Is the WNT token still worth anything?
Technically, WNT tokens still exist on the Cardano blockchain, but they have no market value. No exchanges list them. No wallets support trading. The token is frozen. Even if you hold thousands of WNT, you cannot sell, trade, or use them for anything.
Why did Wicrypt fail when Helium succeeded?
Helium focused on IoT devices and used LoRaWAN - a low-power, long-range tech that didn’t interfere with home internet. Wicrypt asked users to share their Wi-Fi bandwidth, which directly competed with their own internet usage. People didn’t want to slow down their own connection for pennies. Helium also had better hardware, global shipping, and massive marketing. Wicrypt had neither.
Did Wicrypt ever release NFTs?
There was no official NFT release tied to the device drop. The term "NFT & Device Drop" was used in promotional material, but no NFTs were minted, distributed, or linked to device ownership. It appears to have been a misleading marketing phrase.
Can I get a refund for my Wicrypt device?
No. Wicrypt never offered refunds after purchase. With no active company, website, or customer support, there is no path to recover funds. The project has been inactive since 2022, and all official channels have been abandoned.
10 Comments
Jordan Axtell
Let me tell you something real - this whole Wicrypt thing was a velvet-rope scam dressed up as decentralization. You pay $99 to ‘earn’ crypto that’s locked for three years? That’s not innovation, that’s a pyramid with better PR. They didn’t build a network - they built a subscription box for people too desperate to notice they were being played. And now? Dusty routers in Lagos collecting spiderwebs while the devs ghosted into their next vaporware project. Classic.
It’s not even about the tech. It’s about the audacity to call a hardware sale an ‘airdrop.’ Like, come on. You think people are dumb enough to fall for that? I’ve seen better scams in my local Craigslist.
James Harris
I just want to say - to everyone in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya - I see you. You weren’t trying to get rich. You were trying to pay less for data. That’s brave. That’s real. And you got screwed by a startup that thought blockchain could fix poverty without fixing the damn device.
I’ve got a cousin in Accra who still has his Wicrypt box plugged in. Says it makes a nice nightlight. I told him to unplug it and buy a SIM card. He laughed. Said he’s waiting for the ‘update.’
We need to stop pretending crypto fixes infrastructure. Sometimes, people just need a better internet plan. Not a box.
Alex Garnett
Wicrypt didn’t fail because of poor execution. It failed because it catered to the global south’s desperation while pretending it was a tech revolution. This isn’t a blockchain story - it’s a colonial one. Western engineers sell a $99 gadget to people with unstable grids and call it ‘decentralization’ while they sip lattes in Silicon Valley.
Helium succeeded because it targeted IoT, not human behavior. Wicrypt asked people to sacrifice their own bandwidth - a luxury most in the U.S. take for granted - for pennies. That’s not innovation. That’s extraction.
And calling it an ‘NFT drop’? Pure marketing fraud. You don’t get to rename a sales pitch as a crypto giveaway and call it ethical.
aryan danial
Let me be clear - the entire premise of Wicrypt was fundamentally flawed from a systems theory perspective. The incentive structure was misaligned with behavioral economics, particularly in non-Western contexts where device durability, power stability, and network latency are not abstract concerns but daily survival variables.
The tokenomics were not merely ill-conceived - they were structurally predatory. A 70% locked supply with a 36-month vesting schedule in a low-liquidity environment is not a feature - it is a trapdoor designed to extract capital under the guise of participation.
Furthermore, the hardware, being neither ruggedized nor adequately tested for tropical thermal loads, represents a classic case of techno-solutionism divorced from environmental reality. The project’s collapse was not accidental - it was inevitable.
Shruti Sharma
omg i bought one of these things and it just died after 2 months 😭 i thought i was gonna make like $20 a week but it kept rebooting and my wifi got slower??
and then no one replied on telegram and the website went dark and i just left it in my closet. now i feel like such a fool. why did they even say 'NFT drop' if there was no nft??
also my cousin in nairobi got one too and his is still on but says it's just a paperweight now. we both just wanna get our money back. no one cares. rip.
Robin Ødis
Look, I get it - you’re angry. But let’s not pretend this was some noble experiment gone wrong. This was a classic pump-and-dump disguised as a social good. They raised $1.5M, sold hardware to people who couldn’t afford it, locked the tokens so no one could cash out, and then vanished.
The fact that people in Nigeria and Kenya still have these things plugged in? That’s not dedication. That’s hope. And hope is the most expensive currency in crypto.
And yes, calling it an ‘NFT & Device Drop’ was dishonest. If you’re selling a product, say so. Don’t wrap it in blockchain glitter and pretend you’re saving the world. You’re not. You’re just selling overpriced routers.
sabeer ibrahim
Wicrypt was a textbook case of crypto bros misunderstanding the Global South. They thought ‘sharing bandwidth’ was a universal value. Nah. In India, we have Jio. 4G for 10 bucks a month. Why would I buy a $99 box to earn 50 cents a day in a token that doesn’t trade?
And the device? Overheated? Rebooting? Please. You think we don’t know how to handle heat? We’ve been using phones that turn into bricks in 40°C weather since 2015. This wasn’t a tech failure - it was a cultural one.
They didn’t design for us. They designed for their fantasy of what we needed. And that’s why it died.
Jim Laurie
I’m not mad - I’m just disappointed. I believed in this. I really did. I thought, ‘Hey, maybe this is the start of something real - a peer-to-peer internet, powered by regular people.’ I even told my friends. I even bought two devices. One for me, one for my sister in Bangalore.
And then… silence.
The app stopped working. The servers went dark. The community vanished. No update. No apology. Just… nothing.
I don’t care about the money. I care about the trust. That’s what got broken. And that’s harder to rebuild than any blockchain.
orville matibag
My buddy in Lagos still has his Wicrypt box. He says it makes a good paperweight. I asked him if he ever checked the app. He said, ‘Nah, man. I just like the light.’
That’s the whole story, right there. It wasn’t about the crypto. It was about the hope. The idea that maybe, just maybe, someone out there was building something that didn’t just take from you.
They didn’t build it. But we still believed. And that’s the saddest part.
Jesse Pasichnyk
Wicrypt was a joke. A $99 router that doesn’t even work in the heat? And you call that a ‘decentralized network’? Get real. If you’re gonna sell hardware, make it tough. Make it reliable. Don’t hand out trash and call it blockchain genius.
And don’t even get me started on the ‘NFT drop’ nonsense. That’s just marketing noise for people who don’t know what an NFT is. This wasn’t innovation. This was a scam with a whitepaper.