I fell for a scam during the 2021 bull run.
I didn't make a mistake, I made a whole series of mistakes.
Here's my scam story - hope it helps you learn what NOT to do
๐ฉ ๐ ๐งต
It's a raging bull market.
Cryptofluencers are flaunting their wealth, and promising more to come for everyone.
Price targets make the moon look like a friendly neighbor.
I'm also scouting for some juicy moon landings.
Mistake 1: Greed ๐ฉ
Launchpad projects have good moonshot potential in a bull market.
Many do a 10-50x right out the gate.
To receive an allocation, you have to:
1. Hold launchpad tokens
2. Complete a KYC process / some activities for whitelisting
3. Buy the tokens when allocations open up
I found a launchpad project that looked pretty good.
I created a spreadsheet to run the numbers - mainly to see ROI on holding the launchpad's token, and simulate some outcomes.
Worst case: Native token + allocation goes to 0 & I lose 100%
Unlikely and I was ok with that risk.
I bought the launchpad tokens and completed my tasks to get whitelisted.
Now it was time to wait for allocation day.
So I waited and planned my exit, mentally calculating which tokens I would roll my 50x into.
A week or so later, my calendar alerts me that it's allocation day.
My day was packed with meetings, but I didn't want to miss the deposit window and I was quite eager to go and secure my allocation.
I received a telegram message on the announcements chat directing users to go claim their allocation.
Mistake 2: Not verifying the telegram group ๐ฉ๐ฉ
I found myself with 10 minutes between meetings.
I hit the telegram link. It took me to the launchpad page, where I connected my wallet.
It showed me my tokens & allocation details. It looked exactly as I remembered.
Mistake 3: Clicking a telegram link to access a dapp ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ
Now I just had to deposit.
I entered 0.5 ETH (my planned deposit amount).
The MetaMask popup opened, and I confirmed the transaction.
Oops! The app showed me an error saying the transaction had been rejected. โ๏ธ
Damnit โ just gotta try again I suppose.
I muttered some curses about blockchain UX problems, and submitted another 0.5 ETH transaction.
Mistake 4: Trusting the app UI instead of my wallet. ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ
Failed again!
At this point, even my snail-brain was starting to get suspicious.
I checked my MetaMask wallet history. The transactions were clearly there and had already completed.
I refreshed the page hoping to see my deposits reflected - sometimes these dapps take a minute.
By this point, I already had a sinking feeling in my stomach.
I poked through Etherscan, and found that my funds had indeed been deposited to a smart contract.
I went to the launchpad's CoinMarketCap page and found the website from there.
It looked identical. But then I noticed it.
The ONLY difference.
The real domain: app-[launchpad].com
The fake domain: apps-[launchpad].com
This is how I felt: ๐คฎ
I had just fallen for a scam that I like to call "The Clone Project".
twitter.com/shivsakhuja/status/1523302688573693954?s=20&t=Qx3CNuk6o3sMusnS3QWMOg
A similar variation of this scam is "The Urgent Mint".
twitter.com/shivsakhuja/status/1523302704642097152?s=20&t=Qx3CNuk6o3sMusnS3QWMOg
At this point, the funds were unrecoverable and I knew it.
I checked the smart contract, desperately hoping that this wasn't what I knew it to be.
Then I hung my head in shame, and went to my next meeting thinking about all the shitcoins I could have bought with that lost ETH.
Lessons permanent etched into my mind:
โข Don't act in haste.
โข Don't trust Telegram links / groups
โข Only access websites from a trusted source
โข Verify the website
โข Your wallet / etherscan are the sources of truth, dapps are not.
The only thing I did correctly here was putting in only what I could comfortably afford to lose.
Everything else was a shitshow that still makes me cringe when I think about it.
I'm usually quite careful with dapps.
I probably wouldn't have made these mistakes if I hadn't been acting hastily and trying to get it done in between meetings.
Impatience, greed, and negligence cost me one beautiful ETH + gas fees ๐คฆ ๐คฎ
There's a lot of scams in the crypto world.
I made this thread to share the common ones I've seen and help others avoid my mistakes.
twitter.com/shivsakhuja/status/1523302665588936704
I also made this video about the same - if my pea-brain mistakes help others avoid a similar fate, it'll be worth it.
I also wrote about more ways to get rekt in crypto - common pitfalls to avoid.
twitter.com/shivsakhuja/status/1533204982438109185
I've been in Crypto for many years and yet sometimes, I still find myself falling prey to greed and negligence.
I may be a pea-brain, but I try to share my learnings as I spend all my time in this exciting space - follow me @shivsakhuja.