Both lawsuits center on Taylor Whitley and his departure from the project, but they diverge considerably from there. Whitley's suit claims that he was wrongly ousted from the project; the other lawsuit claims that Whitley engaged in "unhinged, destructive, and egotistical acts... to sabotage... "Caked Apes", after Whitley failed to usurp ownership and control of the project entirely for himself". They also allege that Whitley misused DMCA takedowns to have the collection removed from online marketplaces. The lawsuits are liable to be complicated somewhat by the fact that a partnership agreement doesn't appear to have ever been written up.
Parts of the "Caked Apes" NFT project team both sue each other
Two lawsuits were filed nearly simultaneously, each alleging misconduct by the other party with respect to the "Caked Apes" NFT project — a project full of illustrations that were very clearly derived from the popular Bored Apes project, but feature neon colors and psychedelic motifs. Caked Apes so far has done around $1.9 million in sales.
A Robin Hood-esque attacker steals $52 million from Cashio, then returns smaller amounts and pledges to donate the rest to charity
A hacker was able to exploit an infinite mint glitch in the protocol of Cashio, a Solana stablecoin project. They were able to pull around $50 million out of the platform, while also tanking the value of the $CASH token in the process. The attacker left a note in the input data of their Ethereum transactions that "Account with less 100k have been returned. all other money will be donated to charity."
Saber, the providers of the Cashio liquidity pool, published a postmortem of the attack in which they wrote that "We do not have the money to pay back depositors." The hack was the second largest in Solana history, behind the February Wormhole hack. Saber entreated the hacker to return the funds, writing, "accounts with over $100k are often users' life savings on leverage, and many of us will seriously be affected financially after this incident."
On March 28, the attacker sent a message saying that "the intention was only to take money from those who do not need it, not from those who do", and invited users who had over $100,000 to apply to receive their funds back with "an explanation of the source of this money and why you need it back. more detail is better. money will not be refund to rich american and european that don't need it." Somewhat strangely, Cashio themselves began hosting a website to allow affected users to plead with the hacker to return the money.
VeVe marketplace goes offline for over a day after an exploit results in a "large amount of gems being acquired illegitimately"
The VeVe marketplace has developed a bit of a reputation as the partner of choice for some big names who have dipped their toes into "licensed digital collectible" NFTs, including Marvel, Pixar, and Coca-Cola. It is also notable for using in-app tokens called Gems, which can be purchased with credit cards, but have been impossible to cash out since the mid-2021 launch (though VeVe has very recently said they are beta testing a cashout system).
On March 22, VeVe tweeted that "We have become aware of an exploit of our systems which resulted in a large amount of gems being acquired illegitimately", and that they had closed the market, as well as purchases and transfers of Gems. The market remained closed for over a day as VeVe apparently triaged the problem. It's not clear yet what the impact has been to the platform or its users, though many reported that their NFTs appeared to have plunged in value.
G2 Esports sues NFT provider Bondly, accuses them of using them for publicity
G2 Esports announced a partnership with NFT provider Bondly in June 2021, through which they planned to release profile picture NFTs that would also provide access to membership perks. Nothing has materialized since then, despite their plans to launch in February. On March 22, G2 filed suit against Bondly, accusing them of agreeing to a deal they knew they could not fulfill, but that would lend Bondly credibility and publicity via the association with the G2 brand. According to the lawsuit, shortly after the first invoice was sent for the rights payments that Bondly was due to pay to G2, Bondly wrote that the company was "past the point of being able to successfully deliver an NFT program". G2 has said the failed deal resulted in $5,250,000 in damages.
- "G2 Esports files lawsuit against NFT provider Bondly", The Washington Post
Team behind the NeoNexus NFT project raises several million dollars, then abandons it
NeoNexus was a metaverse NFT project that raised about 25,000 SOL (worth around $2.2 million today; previously worth $3.5 to $4.5 million). The project had sold various "property NFTs", and had plans to create other NFTs representing things like characters and vehicles.
On March 21, the project's founder Jack Shi wrote on Twitter, "It is with a heavy heart that we must inform you that we can no longer continue healthy development of the NEONEXUS project. We would like to hand over the project to our community, or a community-selected party for takeover if that's feasible / possible." Going into more detail on Discord, he said the project had run out of money, which he blamed on waning interest in Solana NFTs.
The reaction to the announcement was overwhelmingly negative, particularly given the project's founder's apparent habit of bragging about his luxury cars. Many users described the abrupt shutdown as a rug pull, and one user even mentioned looking into a class action suit against the project team.
Phishing scheme promising to animate one's apes nets attacker a collector's three pricey Bored Apes
An NFT collector fell for a scam website promising to "turn your BAYC animated". After connecting their wallet, the attacker transferred their three pricey Bored Ape NFTs to their own wallet, then quickly flipped them for resale for a combined total of around 264 ETH ($764,000). Zachxbt, a crypto fraud sleuth who first noticed the scam, estimated the NFTs' actual value at closer to $900,000.
It appeared from the victim's retweets that they had fallen for a scam shared by a verified Twitter account that claimed to be one of the Bored Apes founders. However, a closer look at the Twitter handle showed it was a hacked account with the username "volt_france", which previously had belonged to the French branch of the Volt Europa political movement.
Hacker steals more than $1.5 million after compromising wallets belonging to crypto whale Arthur_0x
Arthur_0x, a crypto investor and NFT whale, had two of their hot wallets compromised. The attacker stole ETH and transferred some big-ticket NFTs out of the wallets, including at least five CloneX NFTs and 17 Azuki NFTs. CloneX NFTs have been selling for an average of 16.76 ETH (about $50,000) over the past 30 days, and Azuki NFTs have been going for 12.5 ETH ($37,600). The attacker had not yet sold all the NFTs they had stolen, but within two hours of the attack they had 545 ETH (about $1.6 million) in their wallet.
Arthur_0x wrote on Twitter that they had previously only ever used a hardware wallet on their PC, but when they started more regularly trading NFTs they'd started using a hot wallet. "Hot wallet on mobile phone is indeed not safe enough", they wrote on Twitter, "Guess no more hot wallet usage then." They also wrote, "The only thing I can say to the hacker is: you mess with the wrong person" and tweeted the wallet address to which the NFTs were being transferred, asking for it to be blocklisted.
- Tweet by Arthur_0x
- Tweet by Arthur_0x
- Attacker wallet on Etherscan
Hacker steals $1.45 million from OneRing Finance using code that self-destructs after the attack
A hacker was able to use a flash loan attack to exploit an issue with OneRing Finance. By manipulating the price of tokens in the project's liquidity pool, the hacker was able to draw out 1.45 million USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. According to PeckShield, the loss to the protocol was larger than what the hacker actually was able to cash out.
The hacker complicated things somewhat for OneRing by covering their tracks. They used a "self-destruct" mechanism — typically used by developers to destroy smart contracts that are found to have a bug — to destroy the contract they used to carry out the attack, making it more difficult for OneRing to determine which parts of their codebase were vulnerable and led to the attack.
- "OneRing Finance exploit. Post-mortem — After OShare Hack.", OneRing Finance blog
- Tweet thread by PeckShield
NFT scammers take over the Twitter account of a Florida gubernatorial candidate
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
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.