The easiest way to spot a rug/clone NFT project is through reverse image search.

Once you search the image, 
if there are other variants of that NFT preview that are not related to the NFT itself then be sure it’s a rug. If that NFT preview is also a copy of another project, you’ll see it in the search result. You can expand the result by clicking “all sizes".


it’s actually very simple on PC

Go to 

, click the camera icon (📷) and either paste in the URL of the image, or upload the NFT image from your hard drive if you’ve it saved already or drag the image from another window.

On mobile, using 

, download the lens app. Search the Project's image. It will bring out variants as well. If the variants are different from the original project for example, with different cut-sizes. 


With either method, the results of a reverse-image search then appear, with lots of options to narrow your query, such as finding animated GIFs, clip-art equivalents or looking by the color scheme used in the original image.

in-blok

How to spot a rug /clone NFT with Reverse Image Search Technique. 

Welcome to the first Edition of The Weekly Recap, the Genesis edition. In this edition, we have lots of scintillating stories to share. 

Grab your popcorn, it's time to binge-watch

GHO is a decentralized multi-collateral stablecoin that is fully backed and native to the Aave Protocol.

As a decentralized stablecoin on the Ethereum Mainnet, GHO will becreated by users (or borrowers). As with all borrowing on the Aave Protocol, a user must supply collateral (at a specific collateral ratio) to be able to mint GHO. Correspondingly, when a user repays a borrow position (or is liquidated), the GHO protocol burns that user’s GHO. 

99%voted of users voted for this proposal to be passed. In the past, the stability of algorithmic stablecoins has been put into question but GHO implemented a different mechanism. Let's keep our fingers crosse


Aptos claims it's building the safest and most scalable Layer 1 Web 3-read  blockchain. Everyone claims that these days but we are yet to see the truest web 3 product. Hopefully, Aptos changes the narrative.
Aptos has been hiring actively, building its technology and its workforce. Also, they have raised a total of $350 Million, backed by big VCs in the crypto ecosystem. They announce 

 recently having completed the first incentivized testnet 1. 

Alpha🚨🚨🚨 - No tokens yet. Position yourself, do the incentivized testnet program and follow their media outlets

Opensea introduces Split Earnings for creators. These create avenues for multiple creators to earn fairly from their work. These creator earnings are paid every time an NFT moves from wallet to wallet after purchase. Creator earnings can’t be adjusted directly on OpenSea for Solana NFT collections. For Solana, you'll need
to set or modify your creator earnings on-chain. You can learn more about minting an NFT on Solana in 

Bridge Hacks again? This has been the year of the bridges. No shades but it's becoming incessant. Bridges
provide interoperability between chains. Maybe that's why it gets targeted every time because it has to fill the void of incompatibility between blockchains. This hack was different from the previous ones. It was termed the 

 because a lot of people took advantage of the system through a not so technical means.

Anyway, Nomad announces a 10% bounty for any leads on the stolen funds. We hope they recover as soon as possible. Read

Tinder has announced that it is putting a stop to the metaverse dating project swell as scrapping plans to release an in-app digital currency called Tinder Coins after announcing poorly quarterly earnings. 

The CEO, Renate Nyborg will also depart the company. This means we can't get metaverse dating from one of the leading dating platforms. They aren't stopping outrightly according to the information released but rechanneling the resources to pressing issues at the moment.

Magic Eden finally implemented Ethereum in a bid to fulfill its

criticism goal of being a multi-chain marketplace and create massive mainstream adoption wave. This came with criticism when it was first proposed. People called them out but they kept on building since the goal is morre important. The critics will always come back to use the Magic Eden Platform. For me, I think it's a nice step for Magic Eden as a business but not for the adoption case as they claimed. What do you think?  You can read more on their

This is the end of The Weekly Recap #001. We dropped an airdrop alpha on Aptos Protocol. Don't fade it. 

If you need guides on how to go set it up, dm me on 

Weekly Recap #001: The Genesis

. This will be rolled out every Sunday to look at different events that happened during the week. It will incorporate different sectors in the ecosystem not excluding NFTs, Defi, L2 Solutions, and many more.

ookmark our page for easy access and we will be rolling out a newsletter soon as well.

Weekly Recap: A moment in Blockchain

NFTs have had explosive growth since 2021. Creatives have earned billions of dollars selling digital art, collectibles, and game items using NFTs. It's one of the sectors with the highest adoption in the crypto space and has onboarded a lot of new users. NFTs appeal to all and beyond arts. Each NFT project has a smart contract that lives on the blockchain and keeps track of who owns which asset.

We have seen the implementation in Music, fundraising, Gaming, Ticketing systems, Entertainment, and lots of other use-cases. As a User, I'm fascinated by technology and I think you should too. Web 3 isn't about financial gains alone, knowledge is important too. When you are better informed, you make better decisions. Let's cut right to the chase. 

Do you know how NFTs Metadata are stored?

Do you trust that the entity that created your NFT has put the effort in to ensure reliable access?

These are the questions I asked myself when I just got started in the world of NFTs. We will seek answers to these questions in the coming section. Unfortunately for me, I was a victim of changed metadata. One of the NFTs I held art changed overnight. I checked and I was amused. This got me thinking again. I started questioning my knowledge. NFTs were immutable and are on the blockchain. I started seeking more knowledge to unravel this mystery. 

The NFT creators apparently changed the metadata and images to a pile of ashes from a beautiful image. They were able to repoint the URI to another metadata and images.

 let’s take a quick look at how an NFT is created/minted. NFT, non-fungible tokens are token standards on different blockchains. on Ethereum, the token standard is ERC-721. An NFT is separated into two entities namely 

  Assets are the images, videos, etc. The smart contract is a code that runs on a blockchain. When someone mints an NFT the smart contract runs that code and creates a 

. Each token has its own URI (Uniform Resource Identifier).

The URI is a link pointing to a file on storage somewhere. This file contains all the NFT’s information, including its unique properties(traits, rarities, etc)  and the link to the actual image file called Metadata. 

NFT is a chunk of information that includes a link that points to a file that then in turn points to another file. So each NFT is made up of an image and a metadata file which we will need to store somewhere.

Can we use blockchain to store NFT Assets? We can but it will be too expensive. A block on the Ethereum chain is 45kb, imagine storing videos of 25MB, it going to be too costly to do. This is why NFTs and URIs were created separately. Let’s see the storage solutions for these files.

As a tech-savvy geek, you out-rightly thought of a simple solution. I will use a cloud storage platform for it. There are options like  Dropbox, Amazon, Google cloud, etc. It will work but there's the possibility of people not buying from you. The reason for this is that the future of these NFTs would depend on:

With those three factors, It's so clear storing NFT data on a centralized server is not a good idea. If the metadata and media files of an NFT project are stored on a server and the creator stops maintaining that server, then the data will disappear forever, rendering the NFT ‘blank’. Whoever controls the server can also change the description and the content of the NFT at any point without the owner’s permission. This completely defeats the purpose of NFTs. If your assets can be seized, altered, or censored then you don’t have true ownership.

The InterPlanetary File System, IPFS is a protocol for sharing and storing contents. Content is accessible through peers located anywhere in the world, who might relay information, store it, or do both. An array of computers, called nodes, store files that have been uploaded to the network, and unique hashes are used to identify these files. When a file request is made, the network finds a node that holds that file using the file’s hash and serves it to the requestor.

Persistence is not guaranteed in IPFS. This means that data uploaded to IPFS will not remain there permanently. A file will only exist on IPFS as long as one of the nodes in the network is storing the content and making it available, also known as 

There's a workaround for this dilemma. Many NFT projects and marketplaces either pin their data manually or use a pinning service to ensure that there is always at least one IPFS node that holds a copy. If the project or platform maintaining an NFT’s IPFS data were to fail and stop pinning files, all the stored information would be lost over time as nodes that held copies clear their memory caches or get shut down.

Filecoin is a decentralized storage solution where the user and the node agree on a fixed price to store data for a set time. I chipped in filecoin here because it can solve the issue of garbage collection on IPFS. When you upload a file to IPFS, your file is stored on a node. It is photographically encoded (hashed) and given a unique identifier (CID) bitmaps to be recognized by other nodes. 

When you query your file, another node can find it by using the CID and serve it to you. That node can then store the file for future use. But what happens when storage space starts running low? This is where the Garbage Collection starts. 

Garbage Collection is a process in which software automatically starts deleting files that it thinks are no longer needed. This could mean the files get deleted unless they are pinned. 

Pinning a file simply means that you are asking the Garbage Collector not to delete the file.  You can pin a file through a pinning service, such as Piñata. Some pinning services now offer free accounts for small amounts of data, but if you go over that limit you will need a paid account. So we have the whole centralized storage problem again. If you stop paying for the pinning service the files will be deleted.

Filecoin can solve this in the short term but for long-term purposes, because it doesn't serve files in perpetuity.   Once the storage period is up, and you download your data from Filecoin, it can then be deleted. So files are limited by time.

Arweave is a decentralized file storage network that guarantees persistence. With the decreasing price of physical data storage, every year, It's guaranteed costs of storing Arweave files will further diminish yearly. 

Computers in the Arweave network, known as miners, are incentivized to use the $AR token to replicate and store copies of data that few other miners are storing. This ensures that files are not lost over time with the need for ongoing maintenance.

Arweave stores data in a structure called the blockweave. Each new data block is connected to the previous block and a historical one. Miners must prove they have access to these randomly chosen historical blocks to mine new blocks and earn rewards. This ensures older blocks are preserved

Storing the NFT metadata and media on the same chain as the NFT is the most anti-fragile approach, but the cost of storing data on-chain is high. NFT projects that keep data on-chain utilize a range of compression techniques to lower this cost. Using IPFS or Arweave is much better than relying on centralized storage, but it still requires pointing off-chain.  

How then should I store the data for my NFT project?

As a creator, the choices are before you. There are options for you but with all factors analyzed and weighted, the optimal storage option for most NFT projects is Arweave. There are solutions tailored to each level of technicality. If you are a technical person, you can use the

 CLI to upload your NFT Assets( metadata and files) to Arweave. For less Tech savvy people, the 

 web app offers a no-code solution for Arweave file uploads. 

 platform to easily create and deploy NFT contracts with Arweave data storage. 

 provides a toolkit for minting NFTs with Arweave data storage.

IPFS is the next best option. There are lots of platforms and developer tools for managing IPFS storage including 

  also offers both a no-code dashboard and a developer kit for creating NFT projects with IPFS data storage on multiple chains.

A centralized solution is a no-no for me for long-term metadata and media storage because it represents the highest risk of data loss and corruption.

NFT projects and collectors at the moment don't really pay attention to how fragile the NFT media storage is. Yes, we are still early in this technology and humans learn best from experiences. In the future, we might see media and metadata of big NFT collections getting corrupted or lost forever if there are no changes in our storage systems. Events like this will shape the NFT ecosystem, creating awareness amongst collectors and creators about storage, and eventually, we will see the implementation of a decentralized stage solution. I personally foresee Arweave taking the lead here because it offers data permanence.

NFT marketplaces and apps should also create awareness on their platforms by making information on NFT metadata and media assets storage open, so collectors can make better decisions. Platforms that make it simple for owners of high-value assets to check the health of their IPFS-dependent NFTs, pin the data of their NFTs, and restore that data in the case of a loss will get more userbase.

You are an investor and you wouldn't want your precious NFTs to disappear.  This 

has steps to help you verify if your NFTs are on IPFS as claimed by the creators.

NFTs: Insights into How NFTs live on the Blockchain

Web 3 is a cultural evolution, change in human values and a movement. its not about the technology, its the shift in people's mind and soul. in web3 , we own our systems. our values are to empower people through open source, trustlessness,privacy and shared ownership. These values are the core tenets of web 3.

1. Deliver utility to everyday people
2. Give web3 a purpose beyond financial speculation
3. Create massive positive externalities

A new suites of tools, applications , technology all surfaced with the advent of web3 with financial gains the most talked about. We were overwhelmed with noise and the new technological innovations. This is the present situation in web 3. We need to ask ourselves these questions.

Why are we here? What's the purpose of web3?

All problems are solvable with the right knowledge  but we need to determine out how to apply web 3 to key problems and scale that inside working solutions. The first step is to find more great founders to build great things with core values of the web3 space and readily fund and support them.

Form of  Capital and How they influence the Web 3

Capital is beyond financial incentivization. it comes in various forms and with distinct results. Focusing on the financial form alone makes one lose out on all other forms. The blockchain narrative today is about the financial gains. Everyone thinks its a cash grab system where greed fuels the system.

Capitalism encompasses all of forms of capital which are listed below. 

A diagrammatic explanation is used to explain the various forms of capital, their currencies and the results .

As seen in the diagram above,focusing on one form of capital makes one lose out on other forms. Creating a balance in between them makes the difference.

Charlie Munger quote but no one realizing the most powerful incentives are actually  not financial 

The blockchain ecosystem: everyone throwing around the “if you show me the incentives I’ll show you 

To maximize all what the crypto space has to offer, we need to implement the various types of capital. Web3 is beyond the financial gains alone. Community building, making connections with people and building long lasting relationships should be the way forward. People who have implemented it have gained enormously in the ecosystem.



Why are we here? What is the Purpose of Web3?

Web 3, the new buzzword in town. Everyone’s talking about web 3, though without the full knowledge of its capacity. Its still at its infancy and growing at a rapid rate. The skeptics don’t relent,critics argue web 3 is a solution in need of problems. This is always the case with new technology. The adoption curve is never linear. This shows there is prospect in this space. We could only imagine what can be built in 10 years from now. Web 3 is going to be the de-facto way of life in the future. A whole new suits of jobs, new careers, new technological advancement and problems now being solved in a unique way. For example, we have seen how NFTs can help in the Ticketing systems, in artist royalties and ease of content distributions. Of course , this will be of
concerns to web 2 maxis, striving hard to keep the centralized structure. Social Media in web 3 is built on trust, security and decentralization. You own your data, determine how to use and share it.


Across different chains in the crypto ecosystem, each chains has one or two social media Dapps already working or in the process of launch. This is the future of connecting with your friends, families, fans and your whole community. Web 3 brings forth a renewed hope for what social media can be. It offers the ability for
us to control how our content is used.

The magical piece building the structure of web 3 social of the future. Building a social media platform from the ground up is no child’s play.  Starting out, a social graph must be built to establish the connections and relationship between people. We can safely say the Social Graph is a map comprising Nodes (individual or org) and the edges(relationship). To build a social graph,  tracking Relationship between people is important and it has to be stored on a graph database.

our digital identities have become inseparable from how we define ourselves.

Lens protocol is a web social graph built on the Polygon Proof- of- State blockchain to empower creators ad communities around the world with the capacity to launch social media platforms and profiles they own. Its an open source project which works to enable creators to take ownership of their contents wherever they go in web 3. Taking  excerpts from their 

Lens Protocol seeks to solve major issues in existing social media networks. Namely, Web2 networks all read from their unique, centralized database. There is no portability. Your profile, friends, and content are locked to a specific network and owned by the network operator. This causes each network to fight a zero-sum game for your attention.

Lens Protocol corrects this by being a user-owned, open social graph that any application can plug into. Since users own their data, they can bring it to any application built on top of Lens Protocol. As the
true owners of their content, creators no longer need to worry about losing their content, audience, and livelihood based on the whims of an individual platform's algorithms and policies. Additionally, each application using Lens Protocol benefits the whole ecosystem, turning the zero-sum game into a collaborative one. Developers can design meaningful social experiences without needing to turn to feedback mechanisms to lock in a user's attention.

Lens Protocol = Infinite possibilities on the experience layer for users, because it abstracts away the technicalities of the protocol layer which makes it easy for social Dapps .It means social Dapps built on lens functions independently yet sharing the same social graph. 


The purpose of the Lens Protocol is to empower creators to own the links between themselves and their community, forming a fully composable, decentralized social graph. This is achieved by allowing users to
create profiles and interact with each other via these profiles. In web 2 platforms, user contents, profiles and followers cant be ported between platforms. For example, users on Facebook cant port followers to Instagram. Lens is making these possible by letting developers focus on the user experience which always translate to great products. We will talk about a few of the apps on the protocol. There are more on the app section on their 

Lenster is well known in the community as Len's firsts community built , open source social network.Its ease of use, clean UI and well placed links made it one of the fastest growing on lens protocol. It is a decentralized, and permission-less social media app. You can create communities, join communities ,follow people in web 3 , share ideas etc. This is what the interface looks like shown below in the image.

Phaverapp is a social media app built on lens with a rewarding token economy. t is a shared- to -earn decentralized platform. 

Help us curate the most interesting stuff online and offline and get rewarded. Phaver DAO will share a majority of the platform ownership with the users who are actually creating the value.

The invite-only Phaver app is available on iOS and Android.

Join the discord and telegram channels to get an invite code.

Your crypto-friendly link board. Discover new projects , highlights interesting articles, and share new ideas curated by the community. The trending section shows the links with high interactions. You can also see the newest shared links as well as create and share own links. The only thing you do is sign-in with your wallet.

According to the description on their website,

 iris is a social platform for web 3 creators. share exclusive content, grow a community, and own your identity. made with bubbles and lovely your favorite team behind the two hackathon projects, 

You get access to token gated contents by subscribing to creator’s feeds. 

Lens profiles are unique with an identifier .lens. Its minted on the protocol once. At the moment, only whitelisted addresses can mint lens profile. With time, it will be opened to the public. If you have signed the lens open letter before May 5, you can claim your profile.

You can also get the chance to get a whitelist role by participating and using some of the apps built on the protocol. There's a handful of apps currently on lens creating the opportunity to get a lens handle.


We talked about Phaver app above, be active on the platform and you can earn the a whitelist role for minting a lens handle.

This is one of the numerous ways to get whitelisted for lens handle/profile claims. 

This is the time to take action. Remember, its rewarding to be active in web 3. Retro-activities are rewarded
massively in this space. That's my little alpha for you.

Claim your Lens handle! If you signed the Lens open letter before May 5, you are eligible
to

To learn more about Lens Protocol, go to their

if you are a developer looking to try things out, i'd recommend you give lens a try. They have intuitive developer Docs, a great community on discord as well. A dedicated page for developers on their website  called developer's  Garden. There's a diagrammatic representation of each possible scenarios of applications you want to build on the protocol. A pictorial and interactive free guides

If you are so inspired to start a great journey by building the next big thing, you can sign up for Lens Grants.

Its BUIDL Time! Keep learning and Building

Lens Protocol; The Composable Web 3 Social Media Tool

Building Composable Web 3

The origins of the Blockchain system stemmed from cryptography. Cryptography has existed as much as humanity did. The first known evidence of the use of cryptography (in some form) was found in an inscription carved around 1900 BC, in the main chamber of the tomb of the nobleman Khnumhotep II, in Egypt.
its advanced form, cryptography has evolved in the modern day surfacing in different applications such as Identity Authentication, Digital signatures, Credentialing systems, Integrity in Data transmission and storage etc. 

Blockchain technology, a subset of cryptography was first introduced to the world in 2008 by an anonymous named Satoshi Nakamoto. It is designed to be a self-sufficient decentralized ledger: a peer verifying the validity of past transactions only needs to download the blockchain (the ledger) and nothing else.

Bitcoin was the first blockchain network. A decade after, the number of blockchain networks are over 200 with each having its own distinct ways of operation called consensus. A blockchain network has set of rules controlling its activities which are unique to its network only. Other networks will find it difficult to interact, meaning sending assets from one blockchain network to another is by design impossible. This created a dilemma of Network isolation, stifling innovations. In the real world, different systems are able to talk to each other. For example bank networks, currency conversions etc became easier with the advent of communication channels like SWIFT. To mitigate against this dilemma, interoperability between blockchains is a necessity.

Blockchain interoperability is the ability of different blockchain networks to exchange and leverage data between one another and to move unique types of digital assets between the networks’ respective blockchains. This network interoperability may allow for the creation of powerful new products and services that leverage the benefits of multiple blockchain networks simultaneously.

its not a set rule book. It refers to a broad range of techniques that allow different blockchains to listen to each other, transfer digital assets and data between one another and enable better collaboration. The whole
concept of interoperability is to enable two blockchains to work together.

Blockchain interoperability is impossible according to the classical definition of a blockchain. Under a weaker definition of blockchain, we demonstrate that two blockchains are inter-operable is equivalent to creating a ‘2-in-1’ blockchain containing both ledgers, thus limiting the theoretical interest of making inter-operable blockchains in the first place. We also observe that all practical existing inter-operable blockchain frameworks work indeed by exchanging already created tokens between two blockchains and not by offering the possibility to transfer tokens from one blockchain to another one, which implies a modification of the balance of total created tokens on both blockchains. It confirms that having interoperability is only possible by creating a ‘2-in-1’ blockchain containing both ledgers.

This result is actually quite straightforward if we remember that a blockchain is, by construction, made to be self-sufficient: no blockchain can rely on external data. Especially, no blockchain can rely on another blockchain for asserting the validity of a transaction. Hence, interoperability is a contradiction of one of the
intrinsic characteristics of blockchain. Its imperative to understand to achieve interoperability between
blockchains is impossible naturally unless we circumvent it.

Some notable solutions have been implemented namely:

Network A wants to send tokenA to Network B using bridge C. Bridge C, will initiate the transaction, lock away tokenA on network A, then an  equivalent value on network B is created called wTokenA (wrapped TokenA) using hash-lock functions. This method works vice versa when bridging from Network B to  Network A.

Examples of bridges are Hop protocol, Allbridge, Wormhole etc

The main use cases of interoperability are: first, the transmission of a given cryptocurrency’s liquidity from one blockchain to another. Second, allowing users to trade an asset on one chain for another asset on another chain. Third, enabling users to borrow assets on one chain by posting tokens or NFTs as collateral on another chain.

Each bridging technique makes its own design compromises in terms of convenience, speed, security and trust assumptions. Each blockchain operates Smart contracts would have very limited use as they would only have access to data from within their networks.

Interoperability  of Blockchains

Web3 has been the main song on everyone mouth lately even though the revolution has been met with so much criticisms of its use cases from OGs and web 2. in a recent interview, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, said decentralization on the blockchain can't work. People argue on the real world use-cases of web 3 products in respect to interoperability, speed, scalability and privacy. In retrospect, Web3 is a movement , its beyond WWW version 3. This is a movement towards decentralization, freedom and inclusivity , a revolutionary idea that will disrupt every sector.

Not digressing much, In the content creation sector, Web 2  is built on advertising. Big companies like Facebook and Google make most of their money through monetization of user-generated contents. The users of these platforms gets nothing from the revenue generated. Users are forced to watch ads in order to get access to certain content. Web3 takes a different approach by letting users and builders participate in the growth of networks as genuine owners.

We have seen incentives given to web 3 users inform of airdrops, incentivizing the system. This has been Web 3's native user growth method. This creates a flywheel effect for value dissemination between project as and users which further promotes the transformation of users from web 2 to web 3.

Quest3 is a Web3 quest and event platform incubated by Hogwarts Labs. It is committed to provide a variety of permission-less on-chain and off-chain quests for GameFi, DAOs, communities and other projects, bringing continuous benefits for the users as well as for the Web 3 ecosystem and its native value. Its poised to disrupt the advertising sector, porting it to Web 3 and creating opportunities for every everyone. Users earn tokens and NFT badges by participating in quests and events. 

Users of Web 2 applications spent a lot of their time online unwillingly watching ads without receiving anything in return. We think that this abuse of the users‘ time and data needs to come to an end. The accumulation of data and the further usage of it shall no longer serve as a generator of high returns. Quest3 is poised to change the narrative around this.

On the Quest3 platform, ads will be delivered  in a fun and gamefied way. Anyone can post and complete quests without permission. Quests support both on-chain and off-chain types, and will be automatically reviewed and rewards will be issued after they are completed.

Based on the customer acquisition characteristics of Web3.0 projects, users are actively receiving advertisement information while completing quests and getting rewards and then transforming into community members to carry out secondary communication for the project, realizing a win-win situation for advertisers and users.

It is worth noting that Quest3 will release a mobile app in the future, which will allow people to do quests anytime and anywhere. In addition to that, Quest3 will also provide a customized API service, which lets potential partners, who want to integrate Quest3 in their own Dapp, easily add our offered features.

The future looks promising in the Web3. we are still at the early stages of adoption, growth and technological advancement. Web3 affords us the ability to test new ideas, iterate and improve old techs that scales beyond the shores, on-boarding new the less privileged and opening up opportunities.  

Quest3 will release it’s Beta version in July, supporting Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche and Polygon. It hopes that everyone can earn crypto by completing quests and watching advertisements. Anyone can join the party without permission. After the completion of a  quest, you can get a soul-bound NFT as an on-chain achievement and this on-chain data can be indexed by others after permission.

Quest3; The Web3 Platform Disrupting the Advertising Business

With the advent of new technologies , bad actors always find a way to exploit it. Web 3 has seen a lot of growth in the past few years. a lot of massive growth and growing adoption amongst the people. Web 3 brought a revolution called decentralization into almost all sectors though its not at maturity yet but its getting there. it promises privacy , security and freedom of expression in all spheres. we have seen a lot of hacks in web 3 , in DEFI, centralized exchanges, rugged projects , NFT hacks to name a few. In web 3, you can't always rely on third-party services to secure you. You are the custodian of your wallets. more reasons you have to take charge of your security. There lots of ways to around this but the easiest is getting separate wallets for trading, mint and storage.

The bear market changed the NFT meta and created a 'Free Mint' movement which appealed to certain sector of the NFT space. Projects , NFT traders and Degens hopped on this movement likewise the bad actors hijacked the trend for illicit gains. The new NFT wallet draining exploit is taking shape that uses a mixture of social engineering and takes advantages of the "Degen meta".

This trend/movement was championed by GoblinTown NFT. Afterwards , a lot of project rode on this wave to bring their projects to life. The Basis of the meta is paying nothing for the NFT, no roadmap, no utility, just some art work. they usually create a community after minting , roadmap and further development. this value prop is nice in a bear market because there is no financial risk to minting.

The bad actors/hackers use this to their advantage. Instead of creating fake projects to rip people of their assets, instead they create FOMO, inducing free "degen" mint projects that trick people into granting them access to transfer NFTs and other Assets out of one's wallet.

Usually they start by using legitimate services like 

 to create raffles for their pre-sale list. Premint does not do any vetting on all projects using their services, however many people don't know this and think these raffles are "endorsed by premint". 

Premint put so much effort into alerting its users. A modal pops up when leaving the premint website warning users of possible hacks and checking all instructions before signing transactions.

To make things worse, there is a feature that allows raffle creators to put certain requirements like "must hold a Moonbirds NFT" in order to enter. This can be done without the consent of the project owner, so fake raffles can be made that seem to have been endorsed by them.

So now when it comes to mint the "allow-list sale" you are minting with your wallet that probably still holds the high value NFT that was required to participate in the raffle in the first place. 

A workflow of how the heist is being pulled is analyzed below:

In the steps highlighted above, you have granted access to your NFT Assets thinking you have minted a free mint. The exploit is so successful due they bank on the Premint brand and its not vetted. creating hype around a free mint on twitter is easy because it appeals to human psychology. everyone wants a free mint. high value wallets and influencers hop on free mints, shilling it to their followers to do the same.

We have seen the same method used over and over again lately for many projects. they are easy to detect now. once you see them, always interact with a burner wallet.

If you think you've been impacted by one of these heist, make sure to revoke access to all of your high value NFTs through 

 or transfer them out ASAP to a hardware wallet or a new wallet entirely.

NOTE: when creating a burner wallet, don't make the mistake of adding a sub-account under your account. for example, on Metamask, don't add another account. instead, create a new wallet with a seed phrase and once you finished minting, move your asset to your storage wallet. I'd suggest you have three wallets, a trading wallet, minting wallet and storage wallet. Your storage wallet could be hardware wallet. 

You the custodian of your assets take action, get a hardware wallet from our partners. one of the best products out there

Thanks for staying till the end. We write informative contents on Web3 every now and then, follow us on Twitter @real_blok