NFT scammers take over the Twitter account of a Florida gubernatorial candidate
Nikki Fried's compromised Twitter profile (attribution)
The Twitter account belonging to Nikki Fried, the current Florida Agriculture Commissioner and a Democratic candidate for the 2022 Florida gubernatorial race, was compromised and repurposed as an NFT shill account. The account, which was verified and had more than 270,000 followers, suddenly underwent what I imagine was a bit of a startling rebrand for her followers: her name was changed to "nikki.eth", and the Twitter bio was replaced with "Mod for SkulltoonsNFT, ThugBirdz, AzukiZen. Web3 Enthusiast". The account also changed its banner and profile pictures to Skulltoons images, and started tweeting about giveaways. By March 20, Fried had apparently regained control of the account, though the account privacy had been changed to protected.
The Fried account compromise is only one instance of what has become a trend on Twitter: Twitter accounts belonging to high-profile individuals, or accounts that are verified or have a large number of followers, being compromised and sold to NFT scammers. On March 11, ESPN baseball reporter Jeff Passan also had his twitter account compromised and repurposed to shill Skulltoons NFTs. Skulltoons distanced themselves from that incident, writing that they believed the hackers were trying to scam their NFT community.
"Hackers hijack Nikki Fried's campaign Twitter account", Florida Politics
Kaiju Kongz NFT project artificially inflates its floor price by destroying your NFTs if you list them for sale at too low a price
Kaiju Kongz (attribution)
An NFT project's value is often discussed in terms of its floor price — that is, the lowest price at which any given NFT in a collection is listed for sale. The new NFT project Kaiju Kongz decided to take advantage of the fact that you can pretty much do anything you want with a smart contract to ensure that the floor price of its project only increases shortly after the NFTs are launched. They released their project with a "burn schedule" — a list price that gradually increases as time goes on, where if someone lists their NFT below that price, it will automatically be burnt — the closest thing to "destroying" an NFT that's possible. This serves to ensure that the floor price stays above the minimum value the project creators want, which doubles daily from 0.065 ETH (~$190) on the day of launch to 0.64 (~$1900) on March 22.
Some NFT collectors criticized the choice. One described it as "illegal market manipulation tactics", and others said the project should grow the floor "organically". Given the rampant manipulation in the NFT space, one wonders if the real criticism collectors have with the project is that they were too transparent about their price manipulation, and should've just done it quietly like other projects have.
"New NFT Project Kaiju Kongz Will Burn Your NFT If You List It Too Cheaply", NFTEvening
Founder of crypto investment scheme "IGObit" and the sham organization "World Sports Alliance" is convicted of wire fraud
Asa Saint Clair created an organization called the World Sports Alliance, which he falsely described to prospective investors as being closely affiliated with the United Nations (for some reason). Saint Clair convinced more than 60 people that they should invest in his IGObit digital coin offering, stating they would received guaranteed return on investment, but instead he just took the money and used it for his own purposes. Saint Clair was convicted on March 18, and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
"President Of Sham United Nations Affiliate Convicted Of Cryptocurrency Scheme", U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York
People briefly borrow Bored Ape NFTs to claim as much as $1.1 million in $APE tokens
The Bored Ape Yacht Club recently created a token called ApeCoin, some of which they announced would be distributed to people who owned various Bored Ape NFTs and NFTs from their related collections. However, because the token distribution didn't use a snapshot of ownership data, but rather distributed tokens per-NFT to the first owner who claimed them, people were able to game the system. Some owners of Bored Ape and related NFTs had put their NFTs into an NFTX vault, which is a setup where someone takes a subset of their NFTs and creates a token that is based on them. The token can then be staked to generate yield, or can be sold, and if someone owns enough of the tokens, they can redeem them for the NFTs. A clever operator found a vault containing five Bored Ape NFTs, which had unclaimed $APE associated with them since they were locked up in the vault. They used a flash loan to purchase a large amount of the vault's token, redeem the five BAYC NFTs, claim the airdropped tokens, return the BAYC NFTs, sell back the tokens, and repay the loan, all in one transaction that cost them nothing but netted them 60,564 $APE, which they then swapped for 399 ETH ($1.1 million).
People were somewhat split on whether this could be classed as a vulnerability in the $APE airdrop, since (as with many crypto hacks and scams) the person was operating completely within the rules set out in code.
"Someone borrowed 5 Bored Apes to claim $1.1 million of APE tokens", The Block
Tweet by Amy Castor
Theme tags: Hack or scam, Hmm
Australian regulatory agency begins lawsuit against Facebook over failing to address scammy crypto ads
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced that they had begun federal court proceedings against Facebook, alleging that the company "engaged in false, misleading or deceptive conduct by publishing scam advertisements featuring prominent Australian public figures". The ACCC claims that Facebook ads featured prominent Australian individuals without their approval, and implied that the crypto schemes were associated with or endorsed by those individuals. When a person clicked through the link, they were invited to provide contact information to a group of scammers who reportedly incessantly called the targets to pressure them into putting money into the schemes — in one case, a Facebook user lost more than $650,000. The ACC alleged that Facebook "aided and abetted or was knowingly concerned in false or misleading conduct and representations by the advertisers", but didn't take sufficient action to stop the misrepresentation, even after public figures raised the alarm about their likenesses being used without consent to scam people.
"ACCC takes action over alleged misleading conduct by Meta for publishing scam celebrity crypto ads on Facebook", Australian Competition & Consumer Commission
Theme tags: Hack or scam, Law, Shady business
Binance says it will stop operating in Ontario, for real this time, and admits they lied to investors
In June 2021, Binance announced they would stop operating in Ontario after the province introduced new prospectus and registration requirements for crypto exchanges. However, in December, Binance said in an email to Ontarian investors they were allowed to continue operating in the province — prompting the Ontario Securities Commission to release a statement titled "Binance is not registered in Ontario", which said, "Binance represented to OSC Staff that no new transactions involving Ontario residents would occur after December 31, 2021. Binance has issued a notice to users, without any notification to the OSC, rescinding this commitment. This is unacceptable."
On March 16, Binance confirmed that they would actually stop servicing Ontario residents, for real this time. They also admitted to sending an email to investors on January 1 that said that they could no longer trade or onboard to the platform, despite not putting any such restriction in place.
"Binance tells regulators it will cease operations in Ontario... for real this time", Cointelegraph
"Binance is not registered in Ontario", Ontario Securities Commission
Discord hack targeting Rare Bears NFT project nets attacker $800,000
Rare Bear (attribution)
After hackers successfully compromised the account of one of the Rare Bears Discord moderators, they posted an announcement that new NFTs were being minted. Those who tried to participate in the mint wound up having their accounts compromised and their NFTs stolen. The hackers sold most of the 179 NFTs they stole, for a combined total of 286 ETH (more than $800,000).
Not only did the attackers post a fake mint link, they took steps to prevent the project from thwarting their attack by banning other members and removing user rights that would have allowed other project members to delete the fake links. They also added a bot to the server that locked channels so people couldn't send warnings that the links were fake.
The Rare Bears team did eventually regain access and secured their Discord server. In an apology posted on their Twitter page, they addressed the multiple security breaches that Rare Bears have faced to date, and said they had "stepped up" and would be having a firm audit their project.
"Rare Bears Discord phishing attack nabs $800K in NFTs", CoinTelegraph
"Hacker steals $790,000 of NFTs and crypto from owners of Rare Bears", The Block
Bored Ape Yacht Club launches their new ApeCoin, which immediately tanks in price
ApeCoin price (attribution)
Bored Ape Yacht Club decided to release "ApeCoin", a new cryptocurrency token. The token distribution heavily favors current BAYC owners, truly underscoring the fantasy about a fairer distribution of wealth that some people thought crypto would somehow magically bring about. Holders of Bored Ape NFTs — already priced at several hundred thousand dollars apiece — received airdropped tokens in proportion to their holdings of Yuga Labs NFTs; one holder of 12 Bored Apes, 10 Mutant Apes, and 11 Kennel Club NFTs reported receiving 150,964 APE (valued at $1.3 million when $APE was at $8.56).
The $APE price briefly soared to around $40 shortly after launch, before crashing precipitously to around $8.50 not long after, presumably as people cashed out their free money. Even many cryptocurrency enthusiasts were nonplussed by the launch, with many describing it as a "money grab" or an attempt to enrich the founders, which apparently is a bad thing (despite many crypto projects openly doing the same). One angry Redditor wrote, "Owners of Bored Ape NFTs were given the coin first(very rich people), then it was sold to the normies who got FOMO and pumped the price, then it crashed. Yet again, leaving regular people holding bags of pure garbage while the coin pushers wave bye-bye from their lambos."
"Everybody Is Mad About 'ApeCoin'", Vice
"This APE fiasco is just about getting the founders rich" from r/CryptoCurrency
Tweet by kevwuzy
Winamp joins LimeWire in the emerging "legacy software comes back from the dead to do NFTs" trope
Original Winamp skin, which they say will "be the base Artwork for all your derivative needs" (attribution)
A week after LimeWire emerged from cryostasis to announce it would become an NFT platform, Winamp decided to jump in as well. Winamp was a Windows media player that first launched in 1997, and was sold for a hefty sum to AOL in 1999, before fading into obscurity after facing tough competition from iTunes in the early 2000s. Although Winamp has been promising new versions of the software since its 2014 sale to Radionomy, only a single beta release in 2018 has ever materialized. However, on March 16, the Winamp Twitter account announced "the auctioning of Winamp Original Skin as 1/1 NFT AND the launch of Winamp Foundation". The Winamp Foundation, they wrote, would "collect money to help musicians across the world to make the music they love". The response on Twitter was overwhelmingly negative, with a top comment reading, "It is incredible how you took decades of good will nostalgia and removed it with a single tweet."
Winamp Twitter thread
Tweet by Eric Bailey
Official Formula 1 blockchain game suddenly shuts down
"Tiberon [sic] Car" NFT (attribution)
F1 Delta Time, a crypto car racing game that was officially licensed with F1 racing, shut down in mid-March. The game had previously generated a lot of hype — one of its car NFTs was the most expensive NFT sold in 2019 (more than $100,000). However, game owner Animoca was unable to renew their license to use the F1 brand, resulting in a sudden and unceremonious shut down. Players were given a single day of notice before the game went offline. Users, of course, keep their NFTs, but their ostensible use is now no more. The developers have tried to placate their players by offering various replacement options, primarily based around Animoca's Polygon-based "REVV Racing" game.
"Official Formula 1 'Ethereum NFT Game' Shuts Down", Kotaku
NFTBOOKS enters the race to see who can remake DRM the worst
NFTBOOKS token distribution chart (attribution)
A project called NFTBOOKS has cropped up, promising to "transform the world of book-readings" by creating an NFT economy of authors, book-lenders, readers, translators, and, of course, investors. A writer named Tiffany Hutchinson contacted the project to politely inquire about how it intended to prevent the theft that is so rampant in the NFT space, and received some pretty disappointing answers. After trying several times to wave her off with vague answers about "there will be a review process" to check ownership of the work, they explained that they would implement "a filter on our system" that would check against identical copies. When she asked how that system would work if the original author was not the first person to create an NFT of the work, or how they would prevent someone from making small changes to the work to trick the filters, the project first gave staggeringly poor answers, then wrote that Hutchinson simply didn't understand, then became combative with her.
Fortunately there doesn't actually appear to be much to the project yet — actually creating a platform and an app to allow people to borrow books doesn't come until the fifth and sixth stages of their roadmap. The project is currently on the fourth step, and has been focusing their attentions on things like "marketing campaign" (stage 1), "aggressive marketing rollout" (stage 2), and "extreme marketing campaign" (stage 3). The stage 3 "extreme marketing campaign" also came with a "website relaunch", which we have to thank for one of the most outrageous pie charts I have ever seen (pictured) (which was later determined to have been a stock photo of a pie chart where they'd just changed the numbers). Perhaps they should focus some of their marketing efforts on coming up with answers to the simplest of questions that they should probably expect from authors — the type of people they're claiming to help.
Tweet thread by Tiffany Hutchinson
NFT Books website
Theme tags: Art theft, Bad idea, Hmm, Shady business
Hundred Finance and Agave Finance are both exploited for a collective $12 million
An attacker using a flash loan attack targeted two projects on the Gnosis blockchain: Hundred Finance and Agave Finance. Each project paused their smart contracts, but not before the attacker made off with a considerable sum of money. That day, the attacker put the funds through a cryptocurrency tumbler, making it much more difficult to trace the collective 4,479 ETH that was stolen in roughly equal amounts from each protocol.
Hundred and Agave were the second and third defi protocols targeted by flash loan attacks that same day, with Deus Finance losing more than $3 million to hackers using the same class of exploit.
"DeFi protocols Agave and Hundred Finance exploited on Gnosis Chain for $11 million", The Block
Binance pauses withdrawals and deposits via Polygon
After an extended Polygon outage on March 10, Binance temporarily paused deposits and withdrawals via Polygon on March 15. Although Binance reported it was "due to the network wide issues of the Polygon network", Polygon stated that "Polygon PoS network is stable, and working fine. All funds are safe. Binance is upgrading its nodes, and currently syncing the block data, hence they have paused the deposit and withdrawal." It was unclear why this would happen days after the original outage.
"Binance temporarily halts Polygon deposit and withdrawal to sync nodes", CoinTelegraph
"Deposits and Withdrawals on Binance via the Polygon (MATIC) Network Temporarily Paused", Binance
Theme tags: Bug, Hmm
Sneaky malware replaces Bitcoin addresses in clipboard to reroute transactions
Bitcoin wallet addresses look something like bc1qar0srrr7xfkvy5l643lydnw9re59gtzzwf5mdq, and so it's not always obvious at a glance if one string of random characters might have been replaced with another. Malware taking advantage of this fact has been spotted in the wild, replacing copied Bitcoin addresses with the address of a scammer, so that if a person pastes in an address to send Bitcoin to, it goes to the scammer instead. One trader learned this the hard way when the 0.255 BTC (about $10,000) they'd tried to send to an exchange never arrived. After looking into it, they saw that the funds had gone to a completely different address than they'd intended, and were able to sniff out that malware was to blame.
Twitter thread by Louis Nel
Invictus DAO whales quickly vote to shutter the project in its first ever community vote, leaving most others with huge losses
Invictus token price in USD (attribution)
The Sol Invictus project was an Olympus DAO-like project on the Solana blockchain, much like the Wonderland project that went up in flames recently. Promising absolutely massive returns, with numbers like 60,000% APY being tossed around, people bought in hoping to see their money skyrocket. The project also partnered with major names in the Solana ecosystem, earning legitimacy.
However, although the project enjoyed a spike in price in November, the token has bled value since then. On March 9, the project leaders began a conversation about team salaries, where they also floated the idea of redeeming the treasury and closing the project. On March 11 they began a vote, which lasted only three days, and allowed members of the DAO to vote on whether the project should close and distribute treasury funds to participants. Much like the Wonderland vote in late January, a relatively small number of whales with a large share of the votes (who bought in early and still stood to make money on the project) were able to pass the vote to close the project, despite a majority of voters selecting to keep the project going. Furthermore, because the Invictus tokens used for voting also themselves hold the value, some people were unable to vote in the poll because their tokens were locked up in lending platforms where they had used them as collateral. Many participants in the project who haven't been actively watching the governance page likely don't even know the vote happened.
Some members of the project wrote on Discord that they felt rugged, with one even speculating that the project had been so eager to implement voting so they could pass a "community" vote to close the project and make off with a profit without damaging their reputations or potentially facing lawsuits. Various members of the project Discord shared how much they had lost: one person said they were down $20,000, another was down $75,000, and a third person reported losing $400,000. One person asked "who else is in the 6 figure loss club" and received three agreement emoji reactions; another person said they'd lost a year's salary. Some people already opted to try to sell their tokens early, worrying that the project leaders might make off with the treasury and not allow people to redeem their $IN; others waited in hopes of the redemption price being higher than the current token price; and some even suggested buying more $IN in hopes that they could make a profit if the redemption price is higher than the current price.
[RFC] Allocate Funds for Team / Operational Expenses + Third Option on Invictus DAO forums
[INIP] Allocate Funds for Team / Operational Expenses + Redemption on Invictus DAO forums
Discord compromise targets fans of the Wizard Pass project in a two-for-one scam that both accepted payments for fake NFTs and stole the NFTs that victims already owned
Wizard Pass is an NFT trading community and package of various software tools that can be joined for a price: a collection of 3,000 NFTs gates access to the community. The NFTs had a successful mint on March 7, and since then have been trading for around 0.3 ETH ($800) on the secondary market. Although the project stated that they would never mint more passes, members of the Discord were excited when the project's founder announced they would be doing a public sale for an additional 1,000 NFTs, at 0.1 ETH ($250) apiece. Unfortunately, there was no such mint, and it turned out the founder's Discord account had been hacked. As of midday on March 14, the hacker had received 66.4 ETH ($169,000) from 290 wallets.
A Twitter thread by SerpentAU suggested that the malicious minting website had not only accepted ETH from victims and provided nothing in return, but had also prompted users to grant full access to their NFT wallet, allowing valuable NFTs to be stolen. It's not yet clear how many NFTs were stolen as a result.
Twitter thread by SerpentAU
Etherscan data for fake mint purchases
Collector sues artist after spending over $500,000 on an image of Pepe the Frog that others got for free
FEELSGOODMAN Series 20, Card 50 (attribution)
Matt Furie is the original creator of the Pepe the Frog cartoon that was later co-opted as an alt-right hate symbol, and which has also been popular among crypto enthusiasts and other online communities. Furie, his company Chain/Saw, and his DAO PegzDAO held an auction on October 8, 2021, and seemed to promise that the NFT would be one-of-a-kind: "500 cards issued, 400 burned, 99 will remain in the PegzDAO, and ONE is being auctioned here". Halston Thayer ended up winning the auction by bidding 150 ETH, then worth $537,084. However, on October 24, 46 of the 99 NFTs that were held by PegzDAO were distributed for free. According to a lawsuit filed by Thayer on March 12, 2022, releasing the 46 additional NFTs "significantly devalu[ed] Plaintiff's Pepe NFT to less than $30,000". The lawsuit seeks reimbursement of Thayer's original purchase, as well as punitive damages. Best of luck to the lawyers trying to describe "Rare Pepes" to a judge, or keep a straight face when saying that yes, the plaintiff did pay more than half a million for a drawing of a rather callipygian cartoon frog.
Tweet by Rob Freund
Halston Thayer v. Matt Furie et al
Blockchain tags: Blockchain: Bitcoin, Ethereum
A trader reportedly makes half a million from a flash crash, then the LATOKEN exchange takes their coins
A trader set very low limit order on Ripple's XRP token, and was delighted to see it executed with XRP very briefly plummeted in value in what's known as a flash crash. The price recovered quickly, and the trader found themselves $458,000 wealthier. However, when they tried to withdraw some of their money from the exchange they were using, LAToken, the withdrawal was declined and their account was restricted for 24 hours for an unspecified terms of use violation. When the trader regained access to their account, the XRP they bought was nowhere to be found.
"I made $458,000 in a flash crash buying XRP at 0.00004USDT each, then the exchange reversed the trades and took my profits" from r/CryptoCurrency
Blockchain tags: Blockchain: XRP Ledger
Report alleges Socios withheld payments owed to advisors and staff to maintain the value of its cryptocurrency
Off the Pitch reported on March 11 that Socios, the sports fan platform, had withheld payments owed to staff, advisors, and others who had signed agreements to endorse the platform's cryptocurrency, chiliZ. Internal messages showed that Socios founder Alexandre Dreyfus repeatedly referred to the payments owed to advisors as "the free money we give them". The reasoning for withholding the payments he'd agreed to? According to internal messages from Dreyfus, "When you give free tokens, people can sell at any price... It doesn't matter for them; so it makes the price going down... and the REAL investors who bought are losing money because of that." Staff members also were not paid the amounts they were owed. Some of them had moved to Malta, where Socios is headquartered, and were stuck there waiting to be paid.
"Exclusive: Football's crypto king and the missing millions", Off The Pitch
"'Fan token' company Socios accused of crypto price manipulation", The Verge
$4 billion hedge fund Fir Tree Capital Management shorts Tether
The large hedge fund Fir Tree Capital Management has decided that the doubts around the stablecoin Tether are serious enough to take out a substantial short position against the project. Tether has faced questions from regulators, many of which center around whether or not the stablecoin is actually backed by the reserves it claims to have. Some of the assets Tether holds are high-yield commercial paper, which Fir Tree evidently believes is substantially tied to Chinese real estate firms. If that is the case, the real estate crisis in China (primarily revolving around Evergrande Group) could cause the value of Tether's reserves to plummet. According to Fir Tree, they've been shorting Tether since July, and expect their bet could pay off within a year. Other commenters and analysts have speculated that if Tether collapses, and that it very well might, there could be enormous ramifications for the rest of the cryptocurrency space.
"Hedge Fund Fir Tree Bets Big With Short of Stablecoin Tether", Bloomberg
"A $4 Billion Hedge Fund Is Shorting Tether's Stablecoin", Decrypt
UK Financial Conduct Authority requires all Bitcoin ATMs to be shut down
Bitcoin ATM (attribution)
All 81 functional Bitcoin ATMs in the United Kingdom are operating illegally, says the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). None of the companies operating them have a license to do so, and the FCA has said that they will take action against the companies if they don't shut down the kiosks.
"Bitcoin cash machines ordered to shut down in UK", BBC
Theme tags: Good news, Law
One company now owns three of the most popular NFT collections: Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, and Meebits
Meebit #12742 (attribution)
Nothing really says "decentralized" like one company controlling the priciest and most popular NFT collections! Yuga Labs, the company behind the popular Bored Apes Yacht Club NFTs, announced they had purchased CryptoPunks and Meebits from LarvaLabs. CryptoPunks is one of the oldest NFT collections, and, along with Bored Apes and Meebits, ranks among the priciest collections on the market. Yuga Labs is also the owner of the popular Bored Ape Kennel Club and the Mutant Ape Yacht Club projects.
"Bored Ape Yacht Club creator buys CryptoPunks and Meebits", The Verge
Facebook bans crypto scammer who pulled in up to $140,000 by impersonating economist David Rosenberg
A Facebook comment from an account promoting the Rosenberg scam (attribution)
A Facebook profile impersonating an economist named David Rosenberg was discovered by Snopes to have drawn in around 3.4 Bitcoin in deposits, ostensibly from victims who were convinced they were investing with the actual Rosenberg. The fake Rosenberg profile, and others associated with it, posted about how he had reportedly helped them get out of debt or make a lot of money. The scammer's account was originally created in 2012, and when it began to be used in 2021 for the crypto scam, the operators edited old posts to make it appear that the "investment" operation had been going on for multiple years. Facebook banned the account shortly after Snopes published its report.
"Crypto Scammers Edited 10 Years of Facebook Posts to Appear Legit", Snopes
Tweet by Jordan Liles
MeUndies cancels its NFT underwear plans and sells its Bored Ape after community backlash
MeUndies' modified Bored Ape illustration (attribution)
Believe me, I was as shocked as you were to discover that the MeUndies underwear brand has a "community". But that community apparently objected to the brand's purchase of a Bored Ape NFT, which they intended to use as a print on their line of undergarments. "We aren't going to make any excuses, we just didn't do the work we should have to make such an impactful decision", a MeUndies spokesperson wrote on Reddit. The spokesperson wrote that, after learning about the environmental impact of NFTs and cryptocurrency, they would be canceling the planned print, and selling off their Bored Ape. The NFT in question appeared to be BAYC #3986, which most recently sold in January for around 107 ETH ($260,000).
"An Update on Our NFT..." on r/MeUndies
Tweet by davidgerard
January BAYC #3986 sale
Theme tags: Bad idea, Environment
ESPN baseball reporter Jeff Passan has his Twitter account hacked and used to shill NFTs on "the biggest news day of [his] life"
Jeff Passan's compromised Twitter profile (attribution)
ESPN MLB reporter Jeff Passan was having a great day, as he had been the one to break the news of an agreement between the MLB and the MLB Players Association, who had been deadlocked on labor negotiations. Unfortunately, this was soured a bit by his 800,000-follower, verified Twitter account being compromised and repurposed to shill "Skulltoons" NFTs.
Passan regained control of his Twitter account several hours later. Passan later wrote in a tweet, "hey remember that time i got hacked on the biggest news day of my life". The Skulltoons project distanced themselves from the incident, writing that they believed the hackers were trying to scam the Skulltoons community.
"ESPN baseball reporter's Twitter account hacked by NFT scammers", Cointelegraph
The Polygon network suffers an eleven-hour-long outage
After a network upgrade, Polygon went offline for eleven hours while developers scrambled to diagnose and patch an issue preventing its validators from achieving the 2/3 consensus required by the protocol. Projects and traders alike were affected by the outage, with various projects having to delay planned releases, and users reporting errors and funds stuck in transit. Although the network was able to release a patch to buy them some time, the project had to hard fork on March 18 in order to properly fix the issue.
After someone games the system to acquire a disproportionate amount of airdropped tokens valued at $123 million, Juno community begins a vote to take them away
A blockchain protocol called Juno launched in October 2021, airdropping their $JUNO tokens to members of the Cosmos ecosystem in proportion to how many $ATOM tokens they held. The protocol agreed via community vote that they would cap the amount given to a single individual at 50,000 $JUNO to "ensure fair distribution across the network". However, there is no restriction that one individual only have one crypto wallet, and so one single whale ended up receiving more than 3.1 million $JUNO across tens of wallets, which they later consolidated into one. Because of the enormous value centralized in one wallet — equivalent to around $123 million — if the whale sold off their $JUNO they could wipe out liquidity on decentralized exchanges and tank the price of the token. They could also perform a 51% attack on the network, as they already have half of quorum.
On March 10, a community proposal was submitted, proposing to take away the majority of the whale's tokens (worth around $121 million), and leave them with the 50,000 $JUNO (a little below $2 million) that was originally intended to be the maximum per person. The vote passed, in a major blow to an ecosystem where "your keys, your coins" is taken as gospel — that is, if you control the keys to a wallet, your assets supposedly can't be taken from you.
"We Can Vote Away Your Money for Free: The Implications of Juno Prop 16", CoinDesk
"Juno Network Stakeholders To Decide Fate of Whale's Millions in a Crypto First", Blockworks
$JUNO Proposal 16
Whale account on Mintscan
Thread by TheJunonaut
Bored Apes team asks people to verify their identities for their next project, shortly after making a stink about their own identities being revealed
Tweets by Bored Ape Yacht Club (attribution)
Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) project, announced a new project in partnership with blockchain gaming group Animoca Brands. The signup required KYC — that is, people were required to verify their real-life identities — something many BAYC fans seemed to bristle at, particularly given they had released absolutely no information about what the project would entail. BAYC themselves wrote, "P.S. we don't like KYCs either, but we think you're going to want to be a part of this."
There was some irony in BAYC requiring their buyers to reveal their identities only a month after some of the BAYC founders' identities were revealed by a journalist (who made the connection based on publicly-available information), which made the BAYC team and many of their supporters absolutely irate.
Tweet thread by Bored Ape Yacht Club
NFT collector accidentally sells their rock for close to $0 instead of over $1 million
EtherRock #44 (attribution)
The owner of EtherRock #44 tried to list their NFT for sale for 444 ETH (almost $1.2 million), but erroneously listed it for 444 wei — the fractional unit of ETH typically used for representing transaction fees. A bot programmed to look for listings like this one, where a pricey NFT is listed for far below its average or floor price, quickly snapped up the NFT before the buyer could remove the listing. The buyer of the NFT eventually tried to flip the NFT for 234 ETH, (around $625,000). The trader wrote on Twitter, "In one click my entire net worth of ~$1 million dollars, gone".
Tweet by dino_dealer
Theme tags: Bummer
Entrepreneurs resuscitate 20-year-old piracy powerhouse LimeWire to turn it into a totally legitimate NFT marketplace, they promise
LimeWire, the filesharing service that was enormously popular in the early 2000s for piracy, has been resuscitated — or at least the brand has. Needless to say they are probably not planning to reuse much of the 20-year-old codebase that existed before public blockchains were even in use, if they even still have it at all. The choice to create an NFT marketplace with the same branding as the service that was shut down by a federal court for rampant copyright infringement seems a bit on the nose to me, for a technology that proponents still try to claim empowers artists and actually mitigates art theft. The duo behind the project claim that they are just trying to capitalize on nostalgia for the brand, but plan to operate above-board (though they would say that, wouldn't they).
"Piracy Icon LimeWire Is Coming Back, But As an NFT Marketplace", Vice
"LimeWire Is Making a Comeback, But Not As You Know It", Bloomberg
Pirate X Pirate blockchain gaming platform exploited, blames its team's "utter carelessness"
The Pirate X Pirate blockchain gaming platform was exploited, with an attacker selling of more than 9.6 million $PXP. They were able to dump the tokens into the market for a profit of around 212 BNB ($78,000). In a blog post following the incident, Pirate X Pirate wrote, "Such attack could happen due to the team's utter carelessness to launch the conversion feature despite of its vulnerability. We deeply regret bypassing the inspection that should have been done by a white hat hacker as we intended to roll out the feature long-suspended as fast as we could. We have decided to dismiss our current developer team and are currently in the process of recruiting a new team to assume the responsibilities." They also announced that they had bought back the total $PXP that were stolen, and would be undergoing an audit.
Tweet thread by BlockSecTeam
Medium post by Pirate X Pirate
A trader ends up owing $3600 after an exchange mistakenly deposits 10 Bitcoin in their account
Something apparently went terribly wrong on the trading platform that Twitter user rifftrader was using (though they didn't say which) when 10 BTC (~$385,000) was erroneously deposited to their account. The trader, who was expecting a transfer of $24 USD for Litecoin (LTC) that they had initiated to go through, didn't initially notice that the amount was in BTC when they subsequently converted it to USD. However, when they suddenly saw hundreds of thousands of dollars in the account, they realized what had happened. Not wishing to spend money that wasn't theirs, the trader transferred it back into BTC and contacted their exchange's support email. The exchange subsequently withdrew the erroneously-deposited funds from the trader's account. However, because the trader incurred a cost converting the BTC to and from USD, only 9.8752 BTC went back to the exchange. The exchange then proceeded to demand the trader pay the difference — around $3,600 — and accused them of "trad[ing] on those funds which did not belong to you". The email demanded payment by the following day, and the exchange threatened to send the case to a debt collector the trader didn't send the money.
Tweet thread by rifftrader (in Spanish)
Translation of rifftrader's tweet thread
Theme tags: Bummer, Shady business
Blockchain tags: Blockchain: Bitcoin, Litecoin
NFT project created and endorsed by various English footballers plunges in value, players try to quietly delete endorsements
AKFC #5849 (attribution)
John Terry, an English football coach and former player, launched an NFT project called "Ape Kids Football Club" on February 2. Several players, including Tammy Abraham, Ashley Cole, and Jack Wilshere, all endorsed the project. The NFTs traded for around $650 shortly after the project launch, but as of March 9 were averaging a little under $75 apiece. At some point, Abraham, Cole, and Wilshere quietly deleted their endorsements of the project.
The plummeting price is not the only problem the project has faced; shortly after Terry announced the project in January, he was threatened with legal action by the Premier League, and had to remove depictions of Premier League, UEFA and FA trophies, as well as the Chelsea logo, from the NFT illustrations.
"John Terry's NFT collection plunges 90% in value", The Athletic
"John Terry's NFT project value 'plummets' as Ashley Cole and Tammy Abraham delete posts", Mirror
Bug in Fantasm Finance allows multiple exploiters to take more than $2.6 million
An exploiter was able to use a bug in the Fantasm Mint contract to drain more than 1,000 ETH ($2,640,000) from Fantasm Finance. Fantasm urged their users to redeem their tokens they were staking and exit from liquidity pools, but attackers were still able to drain an enormous amount of funds from the protocol. It appeared that several other attackers joined in after the first attacker used the exploit, though it's not yet clear how much money was lost in total. The primary attacker transferred 1,007 ETH to the Tornado Cash tumbling service shortly after the attack. Fantasm Finance wrote on Twitter that they planned to publish a postmortem the following day, which would include compensation options for affected users.
Tweet by Fantasm Finance
Tweet thread by RugDocIO
Crypto.com gives borrowers in some jurisdictions a week to pay back their loans
Email from Crypto.com (attribution)
Crypto.com sent out an unexpected email to some users, apparently primarily in the EU, announcing that "Lending is no longer supported in your jurisdiction... [and] we are required to cancel your current loans". The email stated that if a borrower was unable to repay their loans by March 15, seven days from the date the email was sent, "outstanding loans and the associated interest will be automatically repaid". This seems like a tough timeline for borrowers, whose loans are twelve months long, and given people tend to spend the cash they've borrowed on something, rather than, say, hold on to it in case they need to suddenly repay a loan with a week's notice.
Reddit users from the UK, Germany, France, and Switzerland reported receiving the email, and those countries now all appear on the 40-entry-long list of countries not permitted to use Crypto.com's lending services. One Reddit user wrote, "I have 7 days to pay a big loan, like big. If it gave us a month I could unstake and pay, but no, they give us 7 [days], I will get liquified and can't do anything for it." Other users were confused to receive the email when they didn't have any loans on the platform, as it was worded in a way that they interpreted to mean they did.
"Crypto.com Tells Loan Customers in 'Excluded' Countries to Repay by March 15", CoinDesk
Tweet thread by Bitfinexed
"Just a week after the 'Earn' debacle, Crypto.com fucks up again by announcing that anyone with a Crypto Loan needs to repay it within 7 days – or be forcibly liquidated via funds in their Spot Wallet. What planet are these idiots living on?" from r/Crypto_com
Theme tags: Hmm, Law
Tech tags: DeFi, lending
Ormeus Coin founder charged with securities fraud for misrepresenting cryptomining operations and other assets
John Barksdale, part of the sibling duo behind Ormeus Coin, was charged with conspiracy, securities fraud, and wire fraud for his role in selling the Ormeus Coin token. He allegedly falsely represented the mining assets controlled by the company, claiming a mining operation that would have been one of the largest in the world, if his representations were true. The company also claimed to have reserves of Bitcoin backing their currency, when in reality these "reserves" belonged to a completely different entity. Through these misrepresentations, which were widely published including in a Times Square billboard, Barksdale drew $70 million in investment from around 12,000 individuals. The various charges Barksdale is facing involve maximum sentences between 5 and 20 years in prison. The SEC also filed a parallel civil action against the Barksdales.
"John Barksdale Charged With Cryptocurrency Securities Fraud In Connection With Sale Of Ormeus Coin", U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York
SEC v. Barksdale
Theme tags: Hack or scam, Law
Founders of several 2017 cryptocurrency companies indicted for alleged theft of more than $40 million
Four individuals who owned and operated EmpowerCoin, ECoinPlus, and Jet-Coin were indicted on wire fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice charges. They allegedly "engaged in a sophisticated scheme that preyed on unsuspecting investors nationwide with false promises of guaranteed returns and virtual currency trading opportunities", then tried to destroy evidence and obfuscate what they'd done after everything fell apart even before any actual trading happened. The group allegedly defrauded investors of more than $40 million over the four months in 2017 that the three companies were active, and they now face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
"Owners and Operators of Online Cryptocurrency Companies Indicted for Defrauding Investors", U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York
Over 10,000 NFTs of photographs by August Sander are delisted from OpenSea after being created without permission
AS10k+ #5489 (attribution)
An NFT project called the August Sander 10K Collection launched on February 11, offering NFTs of all 10,700 photographs by German portrait and documentary photographer August Sander (1876–1964). The project website described a "groundbreaking partnership between Fellowship and the August Sander family estate", apparently referring to their partnership with August Sander's great-grandson Julian. The NFTs were all distributed for free to the Fellowship community, which the project website boasted "speaks volumes about the commitment of both Fellowship and the August Sander family estate to creating a new standard of visibility and public access to large photography collections, an issue that has historically burdened museums". The website does not appear to mention that they take a 10% cut of all secondary sales, which so far appears to have netted them around 7 ETH ($20,000).
The problem with this whole scheme is that Julian Sanders does not actually control the Sander estate — it was sold in 1992 by Gerd Sander (August's grandson, and Julian's father) to the Cultural Foundation of the Stadtsparkasse Cologne. That group was surprised to see all of Sander's work suddenly being sold as NFTs without their permission, and submitted a legal notice to have it taken down from OpenSea. OpenSea complied with the request on March 7. After almost two weeks of stalling and deflecting questions about the delisting without even acknowledging the cause, Fellowship and Julian Sander finally released a statement on the issue on March 18. Sander wrote that "a third party... claims to have certain rights in August Sanders' photographs" but that he "believe[s] the complaint is not valid" and would be working with his lawyers to have the collection reinstated. As best as I can tell, it seems that Sander is trying to argue he is entitled to sell his great-grandfather's work as NFTs because he physically possesses the negatives, despite the fact that the Cultural Foundation owns the usage rights to all of Sander's work.
"Cologne Foundation Challenges Hauser & Wirth Over August Sander Estate", Artnet News
Statement by Julian Sander
Statement by the Cultural Foundation of the Stadtsparkasse Cologne (in German)
Tweet thread by duckrabbitblog
Theme tags: Art theft, Hmm, Law
Influencer Jake Paul alleged to be repeatedly promoting projects without disclosing his financial involvement
League of Sacred Devil #4474 (attribution)
Jake Paul, who is already in hot water after being named in the class-action lawsuit against SafeMoon, has now been implicated by YouTube detective CoffeeZilla in $2.2 million worth of undisclosed promotions for multiple different projects. Influencers are required by the FTC to disclose when they financially benefit from promoting a project, though the crypto space seems rife with celebrities deciding that rule just doesn't apply.
Paul allegedly tried to cover his steps by creating a new crypto wallet to receive payments for each promotion, but then transferred the money a wallet he controlled to cash out. Oops. Some of the projects that Paul hyped in his undisclosed promotions included League of Sacred Devils, $MILF, and $YUMMY.
"Exposing Jake Paul's Scams", YouTube video by CoffeeZilla
Andre Cronje and Anton Nell suddenly ditch their 20+ defi projects
Tweet thread by Anton Nell (attribution)
Andre Cronje and Anton Nell, the prolific developers of around 25 defi projects including yearn.fi and the new Solidly exchange, suddenly announced on Twitter that they would be quitting defi and shutting down their projects. "Unlike previous 'building in defi sucks' rage quits, this is not a knee jerk reaction to the hate received from releasing a project, but a decision that has been coming for a while now", wrote Nell. The sudden announcement caused several tokens associated with the projects to plunge in value. Some people were quite upset with the two developers, with one Twitter user writing, "People lock up billions of dollars for 4 years and dev announces it's being terminated in a month. Defi truly is the future of finance." Others were confused by the statement that the decision was a long time coming, when one of their projects, Solidly, had launched only a month before.
Tweet thread by Anton Nell
Tweet by deddev69
"NFT mortgage lender" Bacon Protocol is hacked for $1 million
Bacon Protocol, a defi project seeking to provide NFT mortgage liens (yes, really) was hacked. A reentrancy bug in their smart contract enabled attackers to get more lending credits than they should have been allowed, and was exploited for a total loss to Bacon Protocol of around $1 million.
Tweet thread by Bacon Protocol
Tech tags: DeFi, NFT, lending
BattleCatsArena apparently rug pulls several weeks after launch
Battle Cat #286 (attribution)
The NFT project BattleCatsArena appears to have rug pulled on March 5, about three weeks after its launch. The project had been announced late last year, with a post from its creator danvee.eth explaining, "After seeing lots of projects with zero utility and surviving 2 rug pulls I decided that it's time to build a real product that will deliver value to its holders from day one." The project had an ambitious roadmap, featuring NFTs, cat shelter donations, and of course a game with several play modes. Minting began on February 16, though the launch was somewhat disappointing — only around 400 of the 500 available BattleCats were minted in the three weeks following launch, and trading volume was low. On March 6, the project apparently deleted its Twitter account, and danvee.eth claimed the Discord had been hacked. All told, the project earned almost 21 ETH ($55,000). danvee.eth wrote on Twitter that he would try to refund people who wished to be refunded (so long as they were nice to him); as of that day no refunds had been sent from addresses associated with the project.
Tweet by danvee.eth
BattleCats Arena OG on OpenSea
Contract address on Etherscan
NeosVR virtual reality project jettisons its crypto component after a team blow-up
NeosVR (attribution)
NeosVR, a virtual reality project originally released in 2018, introduced "Neos Credits" (NCR) in 2018 with the idea that it could enable in-game transactions. The crypto component was primarily managed by Karel Hulec, one of the project's team members. After cryptocurrencies and metaverse projects experienced a boom in 2021, crypto enthusiasts flooded into the project and drove up the value of the token. Some project members described the influx of people from the crypto community as having a strongly negative effect on the community, with one person writing they brought "all of its true slur-lovin' pepe-wearing glory to Neos". After some discontent within the team about the crypto side of operations, members of the team traded public statements with allegations about other members. On March 4, after Hulec released an updated whitepaper fraudulently (but perhaps mistakenly) "signed" by the rest of the team, the project creator and developer announced a proposal to allow Hulec to operate the cryptocurrency "on top of our work, but as a 3rd party solution, under a company solely under his ownership and direction", and for the primary team to cease involvement with the crypto component of the project.
Tweet by Frooxius
Twitlonger by Frooxius
Twitlonger by Karel Hulec
Tech tags: metaverse
Tai Lopez releases an exorbitantly-priced NFT project where people can buy access to him
Some of the NFTs (attribution)
The entrepreneur and motivational speaker Tai Lopez, of "here in my garage, just bought this new Lamborghini" fame, announced a new NFT project. The NFTs feature staggering list prices and promise "value" that all largely center around access to Lopez. Some of the highest-tier "Black Card" NFTs include, "1 on 1 Shadow Tai in Person at His Office" (2–3 hours, travel & accommodation not included), "1 on 1 Whatsapp Access to Tai's Personal Number", "1 on 1 Watch a Movie With Tai" (2-hour movie, Lopez picks), and "1 on 1 $10,000 HORSE Basketball game with Tai", and were presented in a Dutch auction beginning at 80 ETH ($210,000).
Some people in the crypto community responded with disdain at the project, describing it as a "cash grab". One NFT influencer tweeted "Hey @tailopez legit question: Why Would I pay 30-40k to watch a movie with you? or 80-90k for your WhatsApp? Who u think u are? U def have a shady reputation and doing this only adds more fuel to the fire. I respect anyone wanting to add value to NFTs but this is not the way." Others were surprised at the project's smart contract, which not only automatically transfers any money out of the project and into the team members' wallets, but requires the NFT buyer to pay the gas fee for that transaction in addition to normal gas fees for minting.
"Crypto Twitter Outraged By 'Cash-Grab' Tai Lopez NFT Collection", NFT Evening
Tweet by eddyiskongz
Tweet thread by Coffeezilla
Nemus Earth plans to buy and protect land in the rainforest... with Ethereum NFTs and a Brazil nut plantation
Nemus Earth NFT (attribution)
A project called Nemus Earth has emerged, offering to sell you an Ethereum NFT to become a "Guardian" of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. The project has lofty plans to create a "protective belt" in the Brazilian Amazon to try to protect it from deforestation. The project's whitepaper goes on to explain that "economic activity is required" on the land that they will purchase, and outlines a plan to employ the Indigenous people in the area to farm Brazil nuts on an abandoned plantation the project intends to "revitalize". The project describes a "co-op" for the local people that will "unlock generational wealth for these communities", though there appear to be no plans for these people to actually join the community of "Guardians" or have any say in the project's governance. Other economic activity planned by the project apparently involves "sustainable forestry", "empower[ing] local police authorities", something involving drones, and of course generating carbon offsets for other projects.
The whitepaper also addresses that the project will be built on the Ethereum blockchain. There is a section about "pros & cons of Ethereum", which has one section: gas fees. Apparently the project based on environmental conservation has decided to simply gloss over the enormous energy consumption, emissions, and electronic waste stemming from the Ethereum blockchain.
The project opened its second round of minting on March 3, and is offering its NFTs for mint prices between 0.06 ETH and 19.44 ETH ($150 to $50,000).
Nemus Earth whitepaper
OpenSea blocks Iranian users
Iranian users were surprised to find that their OpenSea accounts had been deactivated with no warning. One Iranian user wrote, "NOT A gm AT ALL. Woke up to my opensea trading account being deactivated/deleted without notice or any explanation, hearing lots of similar reports from other Iranian artists & collectors. What the hell is going on? Is OS straight up purging its users based on their country now?" At least one user who reported issues said that they are Iranian, but haven't lived there in years, and are based in Italy.
OpenSea said in a statement that "OpenSea blocks users and territories on the U.S. sanctions list from using our services", though it's unclear why this change seems to only have come into effect recently.
"Ethereum Companies Suddenly Ban Users In Certain Countries", Vice
Tweet by Bornosor
MetaMask and Infura block Venezuelan users, at least briefly
Users based in Venezuela suddenly found themselves unable to use the enormously popular crypto wallet, MetaMask, on March 3. MetaMask relies on Infura, a popular API platform for Ethereum, which had apparently blocked access for Venezuelan users. Both MetaMask and Infura are owned by the parent company ConsenSys. An FAQ page on MetaMask's website states that "MetaMask and Infura are unavailable in certain jurisdictions due to compliance with laws", though it does not specify which jurisdictions, or which laws.
Some Venezuelan users were furious with MetaMask, feeling that their choice to prevent them from using the platform was incompatible with the decentralized and deregulated nature of much of crypto. One Twitter user wrote, "MetaMask Do not tell me that you became Centralized, I have this problem and many people in Venezuela have the same".
ConsenSys later appeared to say that the block of Venezuelan users was in error, writing that "In changing some configurations as a result of the new sanctions directives from the United States and other jurisdictions mistakenly configured the settings more broadly than they needed to be".
"Venezuelan users of crypto wallet MetaMask say they can no longer access it", The Block
People joke about being "rugged" by Ukraine as the country cancels its planned airdrop
Ukraine canceled its promised cryptocurrency token airdrop on the day it was expected to happen. Government officials had previously announced that anyone who donated by March 3 would receive an airdropped cryptocurrency token as a reward; this was a promise that spurred a large total number of donations, though relatively few of much size. Protocol reported that 95% of people donated amounts of 0.01 or 0.001 ETH (equivalent to $28 or $2.80), apparently primarily in hopes of getting the promised reward.
Some publications have speculated that the airdrop was canceled because someone tried to spoof the tokens, but it doesn't appear that Ukraine has given a reason for the change in plans. After the cancellation, many commenters on Twitter, all of whom were hopefully joking, wrote that they had been "rugged" by Ukraine — using the common slang for crypto scams in which people are convinced to buy in on a project that then takes the money and doesn't follow through on its promised plans. In the tweet announcing the cancellation, Ukrainian Vice President Mykhailo Fedorov wrote, "After careful consideration we decided to cancel airdrop. Every day there are more and more people willing to help Ukraine to fight back the agression. Instead, we will announce NFTs to support Ukrainian Armed Forces soon. We DO NOT HAVE any plans to issue any fungible tokens". What a world we live in.
"Ukraine Cancels Crypto 'Airdrop' Rewards for Donations", Bloomberg News
"Ukraine canceled its crypto airdrop. It's turning to NFTs instead.", Protocol
Someone tries to spoof promised Ukraine airdrop
After embracing cryptocurrency donations to help fund its resistance to Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government decided to try to solicit even more donations by announcing they would airdrop a token to anyone who donated. There was some excitement on March 3 as it appeared that Ukraine was seeding liquidity pools on Uniswap with $WORLD tokens. However, blockchain analysis tool Etherscan shortly afterwards marked the token as "misleading... and may be spam or phishing". It's not yet clear what the person apparently spoofing the tokens was trying to do.
"Apparent Ukraine WORLD Airdrop Might Be Spoof", CoinDesk