Crypto Discord’s HUGE Scammer Problem

They promised us a decentralized utopia. Instead, we got scammed.

Crypto scammers took a record US$14 billion in 2021 (equivalent to almost 20% of DeFi’s 2021 market cap), according to Chainalysis.

And if you’ve wandered down the rabbit-hole that is web3 — think crypto, NFTs, DAOs, and the ‘metaverse’ — then you’ve likely found yourself joining a number of communities on Discord servers.

Decentralization and web3 maximalists often speak to the supportive nature of such communities, quick to point out how welcoming they are of ‘normies’, how community members engage in peer learning, and support each other’s work.

True as that might be, the one thing they often fail to flag is the bottomless pit of scammers who typically plague these servers.

Crypto Discord

Full disclosure: I was recently on the receiving end of a hack that cost me significantly less than I can afford to lose but was large enough to hurt.

I visited the Discord servers of several communities that were somewhat implicated in the event — OpenSea, The Sandbox, and LooksRare, among others — and asked how this might’ve happened and whether there might be any path of recourse (there isn’t). I was immediately swamped with direct messages from a handful of folks who at first, appear to be good samaritans simply but quickly become uncanny.

First, they are often unverified accounts.

Second, they have no status in these Discord servers (e.g. they aren’t mods, or accredited contributors to the community).

Third, their command of English, and the way they communicate, is suspect.

Forth, and most telling, they will ask you for your public wallet ID and then ask you to do things like ‘validate your wallet’ by entering your secret phrase into a dodgy-looking third-party website.

Heck, in many communities I’ve joined, I get DMs almost immediately without even asking any questions.

What these folks are ultimately doing is trying to gain access to your wallet so that they can transfer all of your hard-earned assets to their own wallets, never to be seen again (well, except for on the public blockchain…