Qubit continues to try to tempt the attackers who stole $80 million to return it, with increasingly-desperate messages
After a bug in their code allowed an attacker to make off with $80 million, Qubit immediately began trying to contact the exploiter and convince them to return the money. First they wrote that they were "prepared to offer the maximum bounty", which was $250,000, or 0.3% of the amount the attacker had just stolen. The exploiter presumably felt that $80 million was truly the maximum bounty, and didn't take them up on the offer. The next day, Qubit wrote a message asking the exploiter to "negotiate directly with us... if the maximum bounty offer is not what you are looking for". The day after that, Qubit bumped the reward to $1 million (a whole 1.25% of the $80M!) and begged the exploiters to "please consider the big amount of people, families, stories involved in this". On January 30, Qubit announced they would be offering "the highest bounty in history", $2 million (2.5% of $80M), continuing to underscore that they wouldn't seek prosecution if the attacker returned the funds. A number of hours later, Qubit apparently decided to change tactics, writing that they were "developing a website that users can easily search their losses related to the exploit... users can connect their wallets to get documents to report to the police".
Wonderland protocol founder writes that the "Wonderland experiment is coming to an end", despite vote ongoing and majority of participants voting to continue
The Wonderland protocol had a rough week, first experiencing massive losses in "cascading liquidations" and then the unmasking of the previously pseudonymous lead developer as Michael Patryn, a shady operator with a long history of financial crimes. The project team decided to hold a vote on whether the project should wind down: "giving every wMEMO holder back the funds from the treasury that they are entitled to and declar[ing] the OHM Fork experiment closed". The project leaders wrote that they "strongly believe that this would be the cleanest way of moving forward". The vote began on January 29 and was slated to end on January 31.
By raw numbers it appeared most investors opposed the idea, as many will receive miniscule amounts compared to their initial investments. However, the larger holders (most of whom bought in at low prices) stand to make money from the liquidation and some have supported winding down. Because the DAO voting operates in a plutocratic model, where people can vote based on how many tokens they hold, at one point votes from a relatively small number of whales were trending the vote towards supporting winding down even though 90% of individuals wanted the project to continue. The votes to continue had begun to beat out the votes to wind down when Daniele Sestagalli announced on Twitter on January 30, before the vote's scheduled end, that the "Wonderland experiment is coming to an end."
Ultimately, Sestagalli ended up respecting the wishes of the community, who decided to continue the project despite having lost 90% of their money, presumably in hopes of regaining some of the losses.
- "Wonderland votes out QuadrigaCX co-founder Sifu and is considering shutting down", The Block
- "Wind down Wonderland, and give the treasury back to its holders?" vote on Snapshot
- "ELI5 - Explain to me like I'm 5" - The consequences of WIP #4" post on r/WonderlandTIME
- "What is really happening with the vote" post on r/WonderlandTIME
- Tweet by danielesesta
Justin Bieber "buys" a Bored Ape for $1.3 million in a deal that is shady in one of two possible ways
The media went a bit nuts when Justin Bieber reportedly bought a Bored Ape (for several times what it was "worth", for some reason). This served to generate hype for several NFT projects, including Bored Apes, that Bieber has reportedly bought. However, some investigation by @interlunations and Dirty Bubble Media showed that something shady is going on, and neither possibility looks great for Bieber. Either Bieber does own the wallet that spent millions on the Bored Ape NFT and hundreds of others, in which case he was paid more than $2 million by the inBetweeners project — this would mean that inBetweeners lied about not paying influencers to promote their projects, and it would mean that Bieber never disclosed the financial relationship (in violation of FTC rules). If Bieber doesn't own the wallet, then Bieber has lied about owning the Bored Ape he supposedly "bought", as have the projects (though possibly unknowingly) who are generating hype by telling everyone Bieber owns one of their NFTs. The full investigation by Dirty Bubble Media is worth a read.
Trader loses $510,000 trying to convert funds between two currencies
A trader learned that, in order to exchange Ethereum tokens (ETH) for Wrapped Ethereum (WETH), they should send their ETH to the WETH token contract and receive the WETH in return. Intending to convert WETH back into ETH, they erroneously assumed that it "works the same way backwards". The trader sent 195 WETH ($510,000) to the WETH contract only to find they received no ETH in return, and their money was lost forever.
Transaction history on Etherscan shows they were the 265th person to make this mistake. Most people did so with far smaller amounts of WETH, although another unfortunate trader lost 115 WETH (at the time valued at $360,000) on August 11, 2021. A total of 432 WETH has been irretrievably lost to this contract this way since July 2018 — currently valued at $1.1 million.
Fake Bored Ape project pulls in $17,500 following high-profile endorsement of Bored Apes
After Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon engaged in a frankly bizarre discussion of their beloved Bored Apes on The Tonight Show, a fake projects imitating the Bored Ape Yacht Club began popping up on OpenSea. OpenSea shut down several projects of this type, which each brought in several hundred dollars an hour. One such project was left up for two weeks, duping investors out of nearly $65,000.
Lazy Lion Ape Club rug pulls for 50 ETH ($125,000)
Lazy Lion Ape Club, an NFT project in somewhat resembling the mega-popular Bored Apes, listed their NFTs on OpenSea on January 26. In addition to the NFTs, the project promised to generate passive income for its holders, as well as give them 3D models of their ape/lions to be used in the metaverse. The project leaders managed to generate 50 ETH (about $125,000) in sales before emptying the project of its funds and deleting their website and social media accounts.
Khan Academy charity auction ends in blatant wash trade, and Khan Academy removing several former employees from alumni Slack channel for raising concerns
Khan Academy, an otherwise excellent non-profit offering online educational tools, announced they would be participating in an NFT charity auction on January 19. The auction featured an NFT playing card by Parallel, a sci-fi card game that requires players to buy packs of cards (NFTs) to play. Like so many blockchain gaming projects, it appears that the actual gameplay doesn't exist yet — somehow that required a $500 million funding round first.
The auction ended on January 21, with a winning bid of 77 ETH (nearly $200,000) from ParagonsDAO, plus the promise of another 34 ETH ($87,000) donation from the DAO to Khan Academy. However, ParagonsDAO is a DAO created specifically to "play a key role in Parallel's governance" and "support the creation of an ecosystem for Parallel to thrive". Former Khan Academy employee S. M. Lundberg raised their concerns about the wash trading, and "KA elevat[ing] Parallel on its own channels to a largely underage and under-resourced user base" in the Khan Academy Slack, and was removed from the channel by Khan Academy founder Sal Khan. At least three other former employees were removed from the channel for criticizing the decision to engage with the NFT project, as was an additional person who protested the removal of those raising concerns.
Although the auction ended with more than $250,000 going to Khan Academy, it is likely that Parallel got the better deal here — Khan Academy is an enormous name to have promoting one's project. Sal Khan actively hyped the project in various spaces, including in an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box.
87% of trades on LooksRare NFT platform reported to be wash trades
LooksRare, a new NFT marketplace that launched on January 10, has boasted enormous trading volume since day one. It's no secret that wash trading — that is, a user "selling" an NFT to another wallet they also control — is rife on LooksRare. The platform offers token rewards to any users who buy or sell NFTs, which serves to incentivize wash trades, and has taken no action to disincentivize it — in fact, the platform has retweeted another person who described the incentive system (and the wash trading it generates) as "genius". A new report by NFT analytics company CryptoSlam has put some numbers to the scale of wash trading on the platform: $8.3 billion of the platform's $9.5 billion in trading volume to date (about 87%) appears to be from wash trades.
Wash trading is also a widespread tactic in the NFT space to artificially inflate the "value" of an NFT. Because it's relatively easy to create a pseudonymous cryptocurrency wallet, users will "sell" NFTs to themselves for large amounts to create the appearance of higher demand, and to try to convince other would-be buyers that the NFT is more valuable.
After OpenSea begins reimbursing users who lost money due to listings they didn't realize were still available, user "opensee_will_refund_ask_them" and others continue to exploit the widespread problem
OpenSea began reimbursing users who lost money earlier this month through what some have described as a bug with the platform, but which others argue is just a misunderstanding on the users' end. People were able to buy NFTs that had previously been listed at much lower prices, even though those listings didn't appear active to the seller anymore, if the seller had failed to properly remove the listing. The buyers were then able to flip the NFTs for massive profits, and OpenSea ended up reimbursing users to the tune of about $1.8 million. However, there are still many NFTs vulnerable to this, and people taking advantage of it, including one user who named their account "opensee_will_refund_ask_them".
Padawan DAO loses half its treasury through risky money management
Padawan DAO is a project that aims to provide funding to students under 25 to attend blockchain-related events. In early January, the DAO decided to essentially gamble with project funds on the price of Ethereum staying high: they placed the treasury's $150,000 into a collateralized debt position (CDP) for a decentralized stablecoin called DAI. As the crypto market entered a dip, the project's position went underwater and the protocol had to sell 53 ETH ($117,000) to keep the DAI fully backed. The project had been counting on Ethereum not taking a tumble below $2,200, as it did on January 27, which would have allowed them to keep their 53 ETH and cash out their DAI. Since this didn't happen, the project found itself with their budget halved.