Atto, the pseudonymous founder behind Little Shapes NFT has revealed that the project was actually a “social experiment” designed to shed light on large-scale NFT bot network scams on Twitter. Since late December, Little Shapes had been attracting a fair amount of attention from the media and crypto community. This is due to several semi-viral tweets detailing incidents in the founder's life that seemed too good to be true. Examples of such included him waking up from a five-month coma, finding out he had assets locked on FTX, telling his wife and then finding out she was cheating on him …

The crypto space is notorious for its significant swings and ups and downs. Yet the 2022 crash seems harsher and more unpredictable than previous bear markets. Still, there are ways for investors to safeguard their crypto assets and protect them despite the turbulent times. Regardless of the somewhat hostile environment, crypto adoption is still rising, signaling that the bear times will end. According to recent research, about 20% of people in America who have never owned crypto plan to invest by the end of the year. But why is the space crashing when interest is on the rise? Why was …

Two crypto projects have cried foul play over promotional airdrops conducted by CoinMarketCap (CMC) on their behalf, which they allege was "gamed" for the benefit of a small group of exploiters. These promotional airdrops — designed to be distributed to thousands of wallets to raise awareness of a crypto project — ended with the tokens funneling to just a handful of wallets, suggesting potential manipulation of the system. SATT token drop Blockchain advertising solution SaTT alleged to Cointelegraph that a promotional airdrop it paid CMC to conduct in Dec. 2022 ended with 84% of the airdropped tokens funneling to just …

Front-running scam bots are significantly gaining traction on YouTube, with the number of dubious videos increasing six-fold in 2022 according to a new report from blockchain security firm CertiK. In the firm's Dec. 1 report, CertiK explores how a wave of front-running bot scams are promising free returns as high as 10X a day, but ultimately end up swiping people's funds. Notably, CertiK’s analysis found 84% of videos on YouTube mentioning “front running bot” were scams, with the number increasing 500% from 28 videos in 2021 to 168 videos in 2022: “There are common themes in all of these videos: …

The online crypto community has discovered a new Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot that can either be used to warn developers of smart contracts vulnerabilities or teach hackers how to exploit them. ChatGPT, a chatbot tool built by AI research company OpenAI, was released on Nov. 30 and was designed to interact “in a conversational way” with the ability to answer follow-up questions and even admit mistakes, according to the company. However, some Twitter users have come to realize that the bot could potentially be used for both good and evil, as it can be prompted to reveal loopholes in smart …

Automated crypto trading bot provider 3Commas issued a security alert after identifying certain FTX API keys being used to perform unauthorized trades for DMG cryptocurrency trading pairs on the FTX exchange. 3Commas and FTX conducted a joint investigation in relation to reports from users of unauthorized trades on the DMG trading pairs on FTX. The duo identified that hackers used new 3Commas accounts to perform the DMG trades adding that “The API keys were not taken from 3Commas but from outside of the 3Commas platform.” A subsequent investigation found fradulent websites posing as 3Commas were being used to phish API …

An Ethereum arbitrage trading bot managed to hit the jackpot and lose it all on the same day in an ironic turn of events in decentralized finance (DeFi). In a Twitter thread, Robert Miller, who works at the research firm Flashbots, shared how a Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot with the prefix 0xbadc0de was able to earn 800 Ether (ETH), around $1 million, through arbitrage trades. According to Miller, the bot took advantage of a huge arbitrage opportunity that came when a trader attempted to sell $1.8 million in cUSDC through the decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap v2 and only got …

MEV gain, an Ethereum (ETH) arbitrage trading bot built by MEVbots, which claims to provide stress-free passive income, has been actively draining its users’ funds via a fund-stealing backdoor. Arbitrage bots are programs that automate trading for profits based on historical market information. An investigation of MEVbots’ contract revealed a backdoor that allows the creators to drain Ether from its users' wallets. Our analysis confirms what the @mevbots promotes for the so-called "MEV gain" has a fund-stealing backdoor. Do *NOT* fall prey to it https://t.co/z2eDqMF36b. And thanks @monkwithchaos for the heads-up https://t.co/dhSNGljoH0 pic.twitter.com/HWfCAwbae4 — PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) September 23, 2022 …

There's a dizzying array of crypto exchanges out there — with the market becoming increasingly saturated as new trading platforms emerge. Want to make deposits with a particular fiat currency? There's an exchange for you. Want to retain control of your keys? You can go decentralized. Determined to keep trading fees to an absolute minimum? No problem — some sites offer zero commission. Many exchanges also offer a tailored approach depending on whether you're an expert or a beginner. TradeSanta, which offers automated crypto trading bots to the masses, has been keeping a close eye on the evolution of exchanges. …

Twitter is a platform for community members to discuss various perspectives on issues within the crypto space. However, productive discussions are often hindered by bots that spam “why is no one talking about this?” often paired with a link to shady projects or scam landing pages. Because of this, the community expressed their ire in various ways, with some employing satire and even art. No one: Absolutely no one: Crypto bots in replies: WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THIS?! — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) September 7, 2022 Crypto analyst Lark Davis posted a screenshot of bots pretending to be the Binance CEO, …

The decentralized application industry pushed above $40 billion in smart contract deposits in February 2021, and currently the figure stands at $59 billion. To date, “real money” continues to flow into the sector, and on Aug. 29, gaming startup Limit Break raised $200 million. The project gained popularity after the successful launch of its DigiDaigaku free-mint NFT collection. According to a report by Dove Metrics and Messari, the crypto industry saw $30.3 billion in funds raised in H1 2022. This amount surpassed the $30.2 billion seen in 2021. Excluding the $10.2 billion in funding raised for the centralized finance sector …

Axie Infinity, the popular play-to-earn nonfungible token (NFT) game, faced another attack on its Discord server earlier on Wednesday, leading to a compromise of its MEE6 bot. MEE6 is a popular discord bot mainly used for automating roles and messages and is used by numerous crypto projects. The attackers used the compromised bot to add permissions to a fake Jiho account and later issued a fake announcement regarding a mint. The developers managed to remove the compromised MEE6 bot from the main server and deleted the fake messages as well. However, the official Twitter account of the project warned that …