NFT artist "Robness" mints an NFT of a journalist's childhood photo to harass her

February 16, 2022

NFT artist "Robness" mints an NFT of a journalist's childhood photo to harass her

"Robness", an NFT artist who is somewhat known for selling a photograph of a trashcan for more than $250,000, apparently took issue with BuzzFeed News journalist Katie Notopoulos, who published an article in early February revealing the identities of two of the pseudonymous Bored Ape Yacht Club team. Robness was not the only one unhappy with her reporting — many people claimed that she "doxxed" the founders, despite the fact that she only published names that were on public business records and which the Bored Apes company confirmed to her. Some went so far as to send threats to her about her parents, claiming to know where they lived.

Robness decided the best way to make his displeasure known would be to find a photo of Notopoulos as a young child and turn it into an NFT titled "VOTED MOST LIKELY TO BE A FAILED JOURNALIST: KATIE NOTOPOULOS". The NFT description read, "Failed journalism is a true art to master. With Buzzfeed's new article about the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Katie Notopoulos went where no journalist usually goes. She ousted [sic] both of the Bored Ape Yacht Club founders while providing baseless claims of racist tropes about their artwork to further stir up contention. We thank Katie for her continued pursuit in tainting the once respected practice of real journalism. Here we have what is known as doxx art. Enjoy."

The NFT platform where Robness originally listed the NFT, Known Origin, eventually took down the listing. However, due to the nature of blockchains, the NFT itself still exists and can continue to be accessed and traded despite one platform's intervention.

Tweet by katienotopoulos

February 16, 2022

Even Gary Vee gets upset with the shady business in NFTs sometimes

Still image from Gary Vee's video. He's wearing a blue sweatshirt and black baseball cap.

Gary Vee (attribution)

Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur and now crypto/NFT personality, took to Twitter to express his frustration with some projects that airdrop their NFTs to big-name collectors and then market their projects by suggesting the person bought in of their own volition. There is no way for a person to prevent NFTs from being airdropped to their wallets, and if a person wants to get rid of them by burning or transferring them, they have to pay gas fees (averaging around $50 today on the Ethereum blockchain). In an exasperated Twitter video, Gary Vee said, "Hey NFT News and all the other accounts that take money from these projects that airdrop these products into my account and others accounts, and then say shit like 'Gary Vee owns this' or 'this person owns that' or 'this that'. Can you just stop doing that? It makes you look insane. This project is completely full of shit and is trying to trick people, and that sucks."

Tweet by Gary Vaynerchuk

February 16, 2022

Tabletop roleplaying game publisher Chaosium suspends their NFT project after backlash

An NFT of a 3D model of Cthulu rendered as though it is made from jade

Cthulhu fhtagn! (attribution)

Chaosium, a maker of tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs; think games like Dungeons & Dragons) including the popular Call of Cthulu game, launched an NFT project in July 2021. Their initial NFT offering was based around their Call of Cthulu game, but "didn't receive much attention from the gaming press or TTRPG community". However, their more recent discussion of plans to release more NFTs received major pushback from their community, leading the company to release a statement that "we have heard your concerns" and "we are suspending production". In a longer-form statement they wrote that, "In recent months, the debate has become prominent and contentious. Bad actors in this sphere have received widespread coverage. Many people are justifiably baffled, incredulous, and deeply skeptical."

February 15, 2022

BNB42 rug pulls for over $2.7 million

(attribution)

BNB42 was a "100% decentralized investment platform" that promised investors a 20% daily return on their investments. Unsurprisingly, that turned out to be too good to be true when the project owners deployed unaudited contracts that prevented anyone but themselves from withdrawing, and drained 6,445 BNB ($2.78 million) that quickly went to cryptocurrency tumblers. Around 6,000 investors lost money, presumably after being drawn by the unbelievable promises, like "earn 200% and double your investment in just 10 days". As is tradition, the project's Twitter account and website were wiped shortly after the investors cut and run.

February 15, 2022

"NFT influencer" Morgan (@helloimmorgan) repeatedly fails to disclose being compensated for NFT promotions

More shadiness emerges around the Jacked Ape Club as it's discovered that the popular NFT influencer account Morgan (aka @helloimmorgan and morgan.eth) failed to disclose being paid to promote the project, even directly denying it at one point. After the JAC deal was uncovered, someone asked her how many other projects had paid her that she hadn't disclosed, and she replied "I haven't been paid for anything except this one". However, it appears she has been compensated for multiple other giveaways for NFT projects including WomenOfCrypto and Squiggles.

Last year Morgan was caught up in scandal after it appeared she had bought a $24,000 Mutant Ape NFT while simultaneously running a GoFundMe trying to raise $20,000 for medical bills for her grandmother; she claims that the GoFundMe predated the MAYC purchase (though that seems to be in some doubt as well) and that all GFM funds went to her grandmother. Separately from that incident, she also created an NFT project called "Grumpkins" that was supposed to give 20% of profits towards children with cleft palates and also her grandmother's fund; after launching the project she quietly changed the donation amount to 10%.

February 14, 2022

Lonely Ape Dating Club launches to help Bored Ape NFT collectors find love, or maybe pay for it

Lonely Ape Dating Club prototype (attribution)

Left in place for posterity's sake, but the inimitible Katie Notopoulos has determined that this "app" was all a well-executed prank in the post-ironic world that is web3.

The Lonely Ape Dating Club project announced their plans to build a dating app specifically for owners of Bored Ape NFTs — NFTs featuring illustrations of apes that trade for an average of around 90 ETH ($225,000). The app is not currently accepting signups from people who don't own a BAYC NFT, which raises more than a few questions about how successful a dating app will be when its pool of users seems to be overwhelmingly male, though perhaps I'm making too many assumptions about their sexualities. The app does promise plans to release a "Coin Digger" feature, which would "allow non-BAYC owners to connect with higher net worth individuals for mutual benefit", so perhaps that is their plan to solve that problem.

Sadly, the project was cancelled in May 2022 due to "unforeseen circumstances" which I have to imagine were pretty foreseeable.

"Lonely Ape Dating Club: Meet the first dating app for NFT collectors", LifeStyleAsia
Tweet by CoinersTakingLs

February 14, 2022

Leaders of the Canadian truck protest come up with hilariously complex plan to distribute the Bitcoins they've collected

18-wheeler trucks plastered in signage, with a man walking in front waving a Canadian flag. There are several plastic fuel canisters on the ground in the foreground.

Canadian truck protest (attribution)

The leaders of the Canadian anti-vaccine trucker protest communicated their plan to distribute the 21 Bitcoin (worth almost $1 million) to the truckers blockading the border. Instead of giving the truckers the money in a cash format they can actually use, the "professional orange-piller" in charge of the Bitcoin distribution has explained a multi-step plan to give truckers pieces of paper with seed phrases printed on them. The seed phrases will be placed into sealed envelopes along with instructions on how to create a Bitcoin wallet, which are then "numbered and squiggly random lines should be drawn on the envelope to help with later identification". The volunteers then plan to physically destroy the printer with shears and screwdrivers, to try to prevent attackers from pulling the seed phrases out of the device memory. Of course once the trucker has their seed phrase, they have to go through the multi-step process of gaining access to the Bitcoin wallet on their smartphone, and then figure out how on earth to actually use their newfound Bitcoins to, say, pay for fuel. Anyway, I think this all goes to show that the future of money truly is upon us.

"‘Freedom Convoy’ Truckers Struggle to Cash Out Bitcoin Worth $1 Million", Vice

February 14, 2022

BuildFinance DAO project treasury drained after "hostile takeover"

(attribution)

A person managed to submit a proposal to the DAO that governs BuildFinance, a "decentralized venture builder", that would allow them to take over the project contract. The attacker succeeded in obtaining enough votes for the proposal to pass, primarily because they held an outsized number of governance tokens, and because they were able to disable community Discord features that would have alerted more of the community to the proposal. After the proposal passed and they were granted control over the project, they began minting and selling the project's native $BUILD token, draining the project treasury of about $470,000. According to BuildFinance, "As things stand, the attacker has full control of the governance contract, minting keys and treasury. The DAO no longer has control over any part of the key infrastructure." Some have questioned whether the incident can properly be described as an "attack" or "hostile takeover": everything worked exactly as it was supposed to in a "code is law" sort of way, even though it was against the intentions of the project founders and presumably most of its community.

February 14, 2022

The Belvedere Museum dreams big (or, rather, small) by splitting one single painting into 10,000 Valentine's Day NFTs

A small section of canvas with brown paint

Happy Valentine's Day, honey! (attribution)

In a Valentine's Day-themed stunt, the otherwise reputable Belvedere Museum in Austria decided to sell Gustav Klimt's The Kiss as NFTs. But making one NFT was apparently not enough for the museum, which decided to section the digital copy of the artwork into 10,000 individual tiles. Although The Kiss is a very large piece of artwork, at nearly 6 feet on each side (180cm × 180cm), this means each NFT buyer gets an NFT representing a scrap of the painting measuring 0.7 inches to a side (18mm × 18mm), about the size of a U.S. penny. The Belvedere Museum has, somehow, estimated that each NFT will sell for €1,850 (about $2,100). If their dreams come true, selling all 10,000 NFTs would net them €18.5 million ($21 million).

The website for the NFT sale explains a six-step process to obtain one of these NFTs, including the standard steps of connecting a wallet and joining the allowlist, but ending with "Dedicate your NFT to a beloved one", which involves sending... their loved one a form email, apparently. My heart goes out to anyone receiving an NFT for Valentine's Day, much less a $2,000 one representing a portion of a painting smaller than a postage stamp. To anyone who thinks this is a good idea: I am begging you, please just buy your partner some flowers.

The Kiss NFT website

February 13, 2022

One Monero mining pool creeps closer to that crucial 51% of the network hashrate

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Much of the mining of the Monero privacycoin is done by a single mining pool named MineXMR. The total computing power being used to mine and process Monero transactions (also called the hashrate) controlled by the one mining pool has been gradually increasing. On February 13, someone posted in the Monero subreddit urging people to "boycott" MineXMR, because the pool's hashrate was as high as 47.7% of the total network hashrate. If the one group's hashrate breaks the 50% mark, it opens the network up to a potential 51% attack, where the mining pool could be used for malicious actions, including blocking new transactions from being confirmed, reordering transactions, or double spending.

"Concerns grow over Monero mining pool that has 44% of the network's hash rate", The Block

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