[Feature] Scammers Are Stepping up Their Game, and so Should You

"Claim your arbitrum tokens now!" the message read.

That's funny, I thought to myself, scrolling through my twitter DMs. The Arbitrum governance token airdrop was scheduled to begin, yes- but in what world would I qualify? I'm barely involved in the Arbitrum game- to say the least.

Arbitrum uses a points system to determine who could claim tokens in the Airdrop, and these were some of the qualifying actions: completing more than four transactions or interacting with at least four smart contracts, bridging funds into the Arbitrum One Chain, or depositing more than US$50 thousand of liquidity into Arbitrum.

As I said, these were not actions that I had taken- so you can imagine my mild amusement when I saw that I was eligible and supposed to receive governance tokens.

A quick dive into the messages’ provenance, however, revealed several red flags- the account was new, had barely any followers, and the username didn’t have Arbitrum anywhere in it.

Clearly, something was amiss- and as it turns out, I was not the only one that received the messages. Plenty of other twitter users also reported DMs from accounts claiming to be an official Arbitrum source.

This was no april fool's joke- this was an attempt by scammers to capitalise on the massive popularity and reach of Arbitrum, and drain the wallets of those unfortunate enough to click on the fraudulent links that they sent.

And the sad thing is, many would probably have fallen for it. Hell, I might have fallen for it if I was more involved in Arbitrum and therefore expecting to receive some tokens.

Want to know something even sadder? Many of these fraudulent twitter accounts are still live- while Arbitrum's actual official account was suspended after being mistakenly flagged for spam by Twitter.

Yet, Arbitrum is not the only protocol to find itself being targeted for impersonation or other sort of scams- fraudsters seem to be taking advantage of anything they can get their hands on, and even in the crypto winter, they haven't stopped.

On the contrary, many of them are evolving and finding new tactics to adapt to the blockchain.

As Bear Grylls once said, "Improvise, adapt, overcome”

During the previous bull run, greed was driving the market- and so investment scams were what let fraudsters get away with around US$11 billion in illicit gains in 2021.

But, as Chainalysis explains, this stopped working midway through 2022- as news sites put up articles of crypto giant after crypto giant going bust, fear replaced greed as the primary driver of investment decisions.

Following the collapse of the Terra-Luna ecosystem, the revenue that scammers received from investment scams fell off a cliff- and instead giveaway scams and romance scams saw massive increases in revenues.

According the Chainalysis' Crypto Crime Report, this was likely due to a newfound reluctance to invest in projects, given the wider market downturn. Eric Jardine, Chainalysis' cybercrimes research lead, attributed the change to an adaptation on the part of the scammers to the new market conditions.

Since market conditions made investment scams unlikely to be profitable, he suggested, scammers "may be substituting their tactics toward other scams that play on different emotional sense(s)".

Evidently, scams are by no means a new thing, and there will be no shortage of people trying to take advantage of those desperate to recover lost fortunes or greedy enough to believe a false proposition.

And with the bull market returning, it is also likely that old tactics preying on the newfound greed of crypto investors will make a comeback as well.

Crypto: the one place where we hate rugs

It's happened many times before. To say that the crypto space has a bit of a reputation for crime is quite the understatement.

And even high-profile founders once thought to be pushing the boundaries of blockchain tech and decentralisation have found themselves exposed as frauds and accused of scamming customers.

Just think about the 10 million that Mashinsky took before freezing withdrawals and having Celsius file for Bankruptcy; Or the Blockverse rug pull that saw developers take players' money and simply disappear.

There are even rugs where the founders don't take customers' assets directly, but simply farm the hype to pump the token price, before dumping their tokens and making off with the profit.

Some have even argued that projects where founders simply stop working on the project after the initial hype dies down are also forms of soft rugs, since they have essentially sold a token to the community only to fail to deliver on their promises.

So what can be done when you realise that you've gotten scammed?

Realistically speaking, not that much. While tracking lost crypto is not exactly the easiest thing in the world, it's also true that the crypto world has plenty of protocols like mixers that can be used to obfuscate the paper trail.

While transactions are not exactly private, being able to retrieve lost cryptocurrency after finding it is another issue in itself.

Quite often, scammers can use stolen credentials to set up a wallet in order to bypass KYC obligations, and simply base their operations outside of the relevant legal jurisdiction in order to avoid arrest or extradition.

Even if scammers are caught, the shaky legal nature of cryptocurrency as assets could mean that recovery could take a long time and plenty of legal fees.

Unfortunately, given the relative lack of law enforcement in the crypto space, much of the time, it comes down to personal vigilance and other preventative measures to avoid losing money.

But, not all soft rugs begin with the rug in mind, or really with any intention of scamming customers. Plenty of good projects that were begun with the earnest goal of solving problems for communities have simply been abandoned because the founders see no point in continuing without community support.

Communities are more than just people who hold a token- a community should be far more than that, and a good community can be vital in keeping founders accountable and allowing timelines to be fulfilled.

There are plenty of projects that, despite not being cash cows, are still progressing.

Take Enlightened Rats, for example, a local NFT project started by The Daily Ketchup host Johnathan Chua and Chain Debrief Founder Jacky Yap- after the NFT mint, they continued to work on the project Holders of the token enjoyed community perks, such as free access to MetaJam Asia 2022, an event aimed at educating people about NFTs and the potentials that NFT projects had.

There is also the IreneDAO, founded by social media influencer Irene Zhao, with proceeds going towards creating a decentralised social media platform known as So-Col, to help content creators better monetise their work.

These projects were only made possible because the communities that were kept involved, and in turn kept their founders involved. In showing the founders support for their vision and their project, it kept the founders incentivised to continue their projects rather than giving up on them.

These are the projects that deserve support- and support goes beyond simply buying a token. By all means, it is often within the power of founders and centralised organisations to take the money and run- and many have done so.

There is a quote from the great philosopher and father of economics Adam Smith, which reads thusly: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."

If we assume people are self-interested beings, perhaps it is time that as community members, we take greater responsibility for the things we invest in as well. Like the tokens we buy as a mark of membership in a community, for example.

Are we merely customers of a business, whose sole purpose is profit and gain? Or should we be partners in the endeavour, creating something better for the world?

Is that not part of the ethos of the community that we have built?

The Web2 space allowed us to use and create- the great innovation of Web3 is that we now own what we create. In expressing our support for founders and creators, we must go further than simply holding the token and waiting to be served.

And perhaps there should be a greater responsibility upon ourselves to live up to that ethos, and play more active roles in what we invest in and care about. Support means being involved in the community, being aware of what the founders do and are planning to do, and encouraging the founders to carry out their timeline and fulfil their promises.

We should keep founders and creators accountable and interested, and therefore incentivised to better their products, by our active participation and constructive feedback.

At the end of the day, it is on us to ensure that the money we put in is worth it- and to be the change we wish to see happen. Scams are widespread, and they should be stopped. But just because something is right does not mean it should be done- and sometimes, the best thing we can do is to take care of ourselves- do our due diligence, and try our best to help the community thrive.