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.
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.
Bored Apes team asks people to verify their identities for their next project, shortly after making a stink about their own identities being revealed
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.
NFT collector accidentally sells their rock for close to $0 instead of over $1 million
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".
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).
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.
A trader ends up owing $3600 after an exchange mistakenly deposits 10 Bitcoin in their account
![Email to rifftrader, which reads: "Good Afternoon [redacted] Please advise on how you plan to satisfy the debit balance on your account? There was a credit of Crypto currency entered in your account in error and you proceeded to trade on those funds which did not belong to you. If we do not receive payment ofr $3,632.90 by tomorrow, this will be sent to our debt collection agency to be pursued further."](https://primary-cdn.web3isgoinggreat.com/entryImages/resized/rifftrader_300.webp)
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.
NFT project created and endorsed by various English footballers plunges in value, players try to quietly delete endorsements
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.
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.
Crypto.com gives borrowers in some jurisdictions a week to pay back their loans
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
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