NFTs
A user just lost $240,000 worth of NFTs on the Blur Marketplace
An unfortunate user had his non-fungible tokens, valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars, stolen in a sophisticated phishing scam on the Blur marketplace.
The loss, reported by 0xExit on X, formerly Twitter, involved six Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, 40 Beanz and three Elementals, all listed at one wei each — effectively zero.
Based on the current minimum prices for each asset, the total sum comes to approximately $239,676. Wei is the smallest unit of ether on the Ethereum blockchain.
The scam was orchestrated by an unknown entity, which exploited a loophole in Blur’s listing system to allow private sales, 0xQuit, a Solidity developer and auditor, said in a separate post.
Despite Blur’s standard policy of not supporting private listings, the scammer was able to manipulate the NFTs’ royalty settings, bypassing the public accessibility requirement.
Typically, if a scammer tricks someone into listing an NFT for next to nothing, automated bots quickly buy it up at higher fees, leaving the scammer empty-handed.
To combat this, scammers are now tricking people into listing NFTs at high prices, with all the profits going to the scammer’s address, 0xQuit said.
Scammers do this by creating a rule that cancels any transaction if it is not them trying to buy it, effectively making the sale private.
The tactic ensures that only the scammer can complete the transaction, preventing others from intercepting the low-price listings, 0xQuit said.
Quit further explained that the scam involved getting the victim to sign up for something on a phishing site, typically through a fake Twitter account advertising a free mint checker or airdrop.
NFT-related scams have become a constant headache for marketplaces and users alike following a massive surge in the assets’ popularity in late 2020 and early 2021.
In rare cases, this has led authorities to hunt down those responsible for stealing millions.
Last month, three UK citizens were accused of orchestrating a $3 million scam in 2021 related to the “Evolved Apes” NFT collection.
Blur did not immediately return a request for comment.