The NFT space can be like the Wild West reincarnated digitally. Walking into the wrong part of the Web is the fastest way to get into trouble and lose the contents of your wallet. There are traps around every corner for the unaware, and sometimes even the best fall for them.
The team behind the Solana-based NFT project World of Solana faced the scammer who stole 25 of their NFTs in a showdown, and they won. While the technique used by the phisher to steal the NFTs was a simple fake link, the method used to trick the scammer afterwards was brilliant.
Phishing through hacked Discord
Our story starts when one of the team members of Unchained, a cross-chain gaming development studio, had their account compromised. While the minting of Unchained NFTs was well underway, the phisher posted a fake link through the account stating that there was a free giveaway for those who had already minted. Can you guess what happened next?
In total, the phisher drained 109 wallets and took 115 SOL and around 500 NFTs. Luckily for the victims, it seems that the average account balance of Solana minters is only 1 SOL. However, the phisher made one bad move: they drained the wallet of a World of Solana whale who held 25 of their NFTs, including rares.
World of Solana to the rescue
When the team behind World of Solana became aware of the whale’s loss, they set the creator royalties of the collection on Magic Eden to 98% and told their community to await the phisher’s listings. A trap for the trapper.
Two days later, the phisher listed all 25 NFTs, seemingly unaware of the new royalties. The World of Solana community bought 15 of the NFTs, and an unknown sniper grabbed the remaining 10. By using Famous Fox Federation, which is an NFT project that includes the ability to send messages in the form of NFTs to any address, they sent a “DING” to the sniper:
Among the usually savage characters of the Wild West, the sniper stood out and agreed to cooperate with the team, returning all the NFTs for a refund. The community members who bought the other 15 were also refunded from the royalties, or rather, from the pockets of the phisher. All NFTs were returned to the whale.
A happy ending
Fortunately both for the whale and World of Solana, they were able to set the royalties to 98% as allowed by Magic Eden, unlike OpenSea’s maximum of 10%. Without a tight community, a coup like this would not be possible as the royalties would have hurt unaware sellers.
While the World of Solana NFTs were only a subset of the overall items stolen by the phisher, moments of light like this in the otherwise barbaric NFT space can only bring hope for the future.
