On Friday, Feb. 9th, one of my best friends in crypto had his wallet attacked through a phishing scam that resulted in the loss of approximately $20K (details below). He was preparing to use this money, earmarked for permits and licensing and recently transferred to a hot wallet, to launch a community skatepark, a mission he has been working tirelessly on for nearly a year.
This campaign is to restore his savings and save the skatepark in Austin, TX.
Why? It's in all of our best interests.
I’ve witnessed two best friends experience this type of loss, for roughly the same amount of money. The hardest part about getting hacked? Telling your family and loved ones that the money is gone because of bad UX and an industry with an Ayn Rand complex.
For the crypto, web3, or whatever we call this community, such stories remain in the thoughts of the victim’s friends and family and cloud their perceptions of our ecosystem. These devastating narratives then support everything they hear in the news and make them averse to our technology. Who among us could not see at least one friend or family member smiling smugly and saying, "I told you crypto is a scam."
Most people who get hacked are not traders and influencers who play fast and loose with their money. They're people who do their best and after successfully avoiding 1,000 scams, let their guard down on the 1,001st. The victims are all of us. We are all vulnerable to simple human errors or oversight that criminals exploit to steal money from us.
The response doesn't need to be "Sorry, bro, shouldn't have put your savings in a hot wallet." We all think we wouldn't fall into the same trap … until we do. Such traps are waiting for us all, unless we take more collective action to protect and prevent such actions.
So let's combat these narratives by creating better ones. Let's raise enough money to fill the hole that this latest scammer left behind so that EurekaJohn can build his skatepark and tell his loved ones that it was his crypto brethren that made it happen.
But that's not all. If this campaign is successful, we will be forming Verbs DAO, where wallet hack victims can ask for reimbursement and donors can vote on where the funds go.
So next time one of your frens gets hacked, you can just send them to Verbs DAO. We'll figure out the details as we go, but we know it should exist. Like a communal insurance policy on your wallet. Lone individuals in our communities are carrying a heavy burden for our industry's security holes and we need to lighten their load and spread hope.
Details on Warpcast:
https://warpcast.com/eurekajohn/0xf644e35c
The BTC transaction:
https://bitcoin.atomicwallet.io/tx/e414bc9798f54f5fb800678a514a3bef9d3b77d9ba11976e75288083936e3c4a
The Scammer’s Wallet Address:
bc1q09khj5lw38cuvke3yhsrg86r9ndywk0xxfez90
The ETH transaction:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x91e2d51158f59c15edf68857908685d9ab9794c62a8498826dcc65c49284b795