...and is definitely not an enormous grift that's pouring lighter fluid on our already smoldering planet.
Created by Molly White. Subscribe to her newsletter for weekly recaps.
Sony's crackdown on these tokens perhaps should not have come as a huge surprise, given that the announcement of Soneium's launch touted "protecting content rights and creating fair profit-sharing mechanisms" among its goals.
Nevertheless, members of the Soneium Discord widely accused Sony of "rugging" or "honeypotting" them by prohibiting trading on the memecoins they had purchased.
Buyers were told they could use the NFTs as a sort of fan pass, receiving access to a Discord, and earning ground passes and behind-the-scenes access for finals weeks. There was also a scheme in which NFT holders could redeem access to passes to matches.
However, the Australian Open seems to have let the project — launched at the peak of NFT hype — peter out, with no mention of redeeming passes, and project websites still promising a 2024 update. The Discord has been shut down.
UniLend acknowledged the hack, downplaying it as affecting "only" 4% of the platform's $4.7 million TVL. They offered a bounty to the attacker.
Shortly after the token's public launch, Bankless VC dumped 300,000 AICC (8% of their allocation) for 344 SOL ($65,300). By immediately dumping tokens on retail when the token opened for public trading, they were able to sell the tokens for an average of $0.22 — considerably higher than the $0.05 to $0.11 the token has been trading at over the last 24 hours.
When questioned about the trades, Bankless host David Hoffmann wrote: "Agree that Bankless Ventures should not be selling tokens - that was an impulsive mistake." He announced that they had repurchased the tokens they had sold, and were "discussing a self-imposed vesting schedule" for selling tokens that they themselves had promoted.
They later posted a long apology in their Discord, blaming the sales on Ben Lakoff, a general partner of Bankless VC. "Ben did not have context for this, and was in the mindset of trading a local high as you might trade a meme coin you're bullish on - or there's no way he would have done this - huge mistake, first time something like this has happened - he's devastated", explained Bankless co-host Ryan Sean Adams. He also placed some blame on AICC for not imposing any token lockups or vesting schedule that would prohibit early investors from dumping tokens on retail.
One single victim was defrauded out of more than $100,000.
The NYAG has seized $2.2 million in Tether, and is pursuing legal action against the as-yet-unidentified scammers. Because of the unknown identities of the defendants, the NYAG will serve notice of the lawsuit via NFT — something they describe as a first by government regulators.
Another $1.47 million in assets were vulnerable as a result, but the whitehat blockchain security firm Seal911 successfully drained those funds to later be returned to the protocol once it was secured.
"The team is not sure what happened," wrote Orange Finance in a tweet announcing the hack, encouraging people to revoke contract approvals for the compromised addresses.
Orange Finance attempted to negotiate with the attacker via on-chain message, writing, "If you respond positively to our offer within 24 hours, we guarantee that no law enforcement agencies will be involved, and the matter will be treated as a white-hat hack."
Victims estimate that between €1.5 million and €4.5 million (~$1.54 million – $4.64 million) was stolen.
The man contacted Canadian police, who told him the assets had been transferred out of the country and that they were unable to trace it.
This time, the FEG project team blamed an issue with the project's bridge, which is a tool used to deposit and withdraw tokens from the project. An attacker was able to maliciously withdraw a large amount of FEG tokens via the flaw in the bridge, which they then sold off for around $1.07 million, tanking the FEG token price by 99% in the process. The bridge had been audited by the PeckShield blockchain security firm.
No JavaScript? That's cool too! Check out the Web 1.0 version of the site to see more entries.
![[person 1]
yeah the two meme tokens that everyone was excited about seem to be blacklisted now
[person 2]
0xea4E0CfF21Ea0a1650B658AAf5142720195245bB Is this what the team members do?
[person 3]
aibo now forbidden on explorer...
[person 4]
I just wanted a cute robot dog koin?
[person 5]
Why are you honeypotting coins lol
[person 1]
this is very bad vibes
[person 2]
A disastrous beginning
[person 1]
obviously not end-of-the-world but people bridged to Soneium to ape new memecoins and seeing themselves get locked out and rugged in real time](https://primary-cdn.web3isgoinggreat.com/entryImages/resized/sony-rug_300.webp)
