Members of a DAO hoping to build an Ethereum city in Wyoming are scammed out of around $100,000
Crypto investors who bought 40 acres of land in Wyoming in hopes of "building a city on the Ethereum blockchain" lost more than $92,000 to a Discord hack. Some clever social engineering and questionable security measures on Discord's part allowed scammers to gain control of a CityDAO Discord moderator's account, then send out fake announcements about a fake "land drop". The scammer received over 29.67 ETH (about $92,000).
MetaDAO project rugpulls for more than $3.2 million
A project that promised to be "the DAO of DAOs" managed to accumulate and then make off with 800 ETH, which was worth around $3.2 million at the time of the scam. The project creators took the invested tokens and quickly tumbled them using Tornado Cash.
- "MetaDAO Makes Off With $3.2M in Rug Pull", Cryptobriefing
A DAO forms with the goal of "liberating" Blockbuster, hoping to raise $5 million from NFTs
A group called "BlockbusterDAO" emerged, with the stated goal of "liberat[ing] Blockbuster and form[ing] a DAO to collectively govern the brand as we turn Blockbuster into the first-ever DeFilm streaming platform". Ideas for the DAO's plans after buying the corporation included creating original films and also getting into crypto gaming, for some reason. Some outlets noted that it's unlikely Dish, the current owner of Blockbuster, would sell the corporation for any amount (and particularly for an amount $315 million less than what it bought them for ten years ago), but I suspect that minor detail is unlikely to slow the group down much.
An attempted governance attack aims to defraud 25 million MIR (about $64.2 million) from Terra's Mirror protocol
A scammer created a public poll on Mirror's official website, proposing to "Freeze the community pool in case of scam". However, if the poll passed, it would send 25 MIR to the poll creator. Because of the design of the poll system, Mirror can't remove the poll, and so has attempted to inform its community of the potential scam by creating a different poll, as well as tweeting about it. The governance platform shows a slew of polls, including, "Alert: Poll 211 is SCAM -- sending 25,000,000 MIR to itself", "Vote NO on fraudulent pools #185, ..., #208", "VOTE NO ON POLL 185 IT IS A SCAM", and "poll 205 is right ! vote yes !"
Coindesk writer Andrew Thurman says the quiet part out loud
Thurman began an article by writing, "Yes, it's a Ponzi scheme. But who cares? So are the dollars in your pocket." He was writing about OlympusDAO, a "decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol whose primary use case seems to be 'making people extremely angry.'"
$120 million is stolen from BadgerDAO
A hacker was able to use a compromised Cloudflare API key to inject malicious code into the BadgerDAO platform via Cloudflare Workers. They then siphoned currency of various kinds, equivalent to approximately $120 million, out of user accounts over approximately two weeks before being discovered.
A project called "Unvaxxed Sperm" combines COVID-19 misinformation and memecoins
Developers launched a memecoin called "Unvaxxed Sperm", hoping to make a buck while also recruiting for their anti-vaccine group. The name is based on the belief that in the future, sperm (and eggs) from unvaccinated individuals will have enormous monetary value, which is based on the false belief that COVID-19 vaccines render people infertile. The group also promised to make a "pureblood" version of Tinder for the unvaccinated, and create a DAO to allow investors to crowdsource decisions on which anti-vaccine groups and individuals are worthy of their donations.
Either a rugpull or massive communication failure ends in disaster for most holders of SnowdogDAO's token
SnowdogDAO creators say they didn't rugpull, but that the coin plummeting over 90% was a "game-theory experiment" that went wrong. The project was intended to only last for eight days, and when the developers began the planned buyback of SDOG tokens, value crashed. The developers never made it clear to the community that only 7% of tokens could be sold above market price before the buyback, and hundreds of people lost most of their funds. Three addresses made between $3.3 and $10 million from the buyback, and many believe they belong to people who are connected to the development team. In total, about $30 million was lost.
- "Avalancheâs first memecoin SDOG ends in a $30M possible rugpull", Cryptoslate
- "OlympusDAO Fork Snowdog Hit By 90% Crash", Crypto Briefing
A DAO raised more than $40 million to try to buy a copy of the United States Constitution, failed, and then stumbled chaotically to its end
ConstitutionDAO emerged out of a Twitter joke, but ultimately raised more than $40 million to bid on an auction for a rare first printing of the U.S. Constitution. After being outbid by a hedge fund CEO, the group refunded all donations. However, there was enormous infighting over things like the possible value of the governance token (named $PEOPLE), and enormous gas fees taking up much of the money that people were supposed to be refunded. Ultimately, the DAO closed down without a single vote being cast.
- "Crypto collective raises $40 million to buy rare copy of U.S. Constitution", Fortune
- "Crypto collective loses bid to buy rare copy of U.S. Constitution", Fortune
- "ConstitutionDAO Is Shutting Down After Unrelenting Chaos", Vice
- "'Buy the Constitution' Aftermath: Everyone Very Mad, Confused, Losing Lots of Money, Fighting, Crying, Etc.", Vice
$60 million disappears in AnubisDAO project within a day of its launch
A project called AnubisDAO launched a coin called ANKH, and were quickly flooded with cash from investors hoping to find another dog-themed memecoin success like Dogecoin or Shiba Inu. In less than 24 hours, the money vanished from the liquidity pool in what project creators claim was a phishing attack, but more likely was a rug pull. One investor interviewed by CNBC said he had invested nearly $470,000 in the coin before the money was drained.