Perle Labs

Perle Labs (formerly Kiva AI) is widely characterized as an exploitative project that farmed users for months through gas-fee-dependent tasks, badge minting, and data labeling while promising airdrop rewards. The majority of participants—reportedly 80–90%—were marked ineligible at the checker stage without clear criteria or explanation, despite completing all requirements and paying significant SOL fees. Users report the project raised $17.5 million but distributed less than $350k in actual airdrop value (0.23% of promised 7%), extracted $30k in claiming fees, and maintained poor communication and lack of transparency throughout. A small minority of positive reviews praise the technical vision around on-chain privacy and AI infrastructure, but these are vastly outweighed by accusations of community exploitation, data theft, insider favoritism in role distribution, and deliberate bait-and-switch tactics.