Today’s edition is brought to you by SailGP - they’re revolutionizing sports by offering fans the chance to own a piece of a professional sports team.
GM. This is Milk Road, the England of crypto newsletters. We’ve got all the tea here.
Here’s what we got for you today:
- Arkham’s wild week 🤕
- A first-ever for crypto…👀
- Crypto devs are leaving 💨
- Another NFT project got hacked 🍪
Prices as of 8:30 AM ET.
ARKHAM’S BOTCHED INTEL-TO-EARN SERVICE 🤕
Ladies & gents, we’ve got a new juicy story for you. It includes:
- A new buzzword (“intel-to-earn”)
- A botched product launch where users accidentally got doxxed. Oops
- Rumors federal agents are involved
The star of the story: Arkham Intelligence - a blockchain analytics platform.
Grab that popcorn. This one’s a doozy.
Let’s break it down into 2 parts…
Part l: Arkham Intelligence announced it was launching a new token, ARKM
ARKM is described as… checks notes… “the first crypto intelligence token.”
Arkham also announced it would be having an airdrop. (AKA a crypto investor’s favorite word.)
In order to be eligible, users would need to post a referral link. Tons of people posted it.
But here’s the kicker: the referral link also doxxed the users’ email addresses at the same time.
You see, the users’ personal email addresses were added to the end of the referral link and encoded in base64 (fancy nerd talk for encryption using a bunch of numbers/letters.)
But someone could take that base64, put it into a decoder, and voila! the users’ email address would appear. 🤔
ABSOLUTE LMAO. ALL #ARKHAM REFERRAL LINKS SHARED ON TWITTER IS DOXXING EVERYONE BECAUSE THE EMAIL IS IN THE REFERRAL URL. @inversebrah platform.arkhamintelligence.com/waitlist?refer… -> [email protected] httt
— m4gicpotato ⟁ (@m4gicpotato)5:53 PM • Jul 10, 2023
But wait, there’s more…
Part ll: Arkham announced its intel-to-earn exchange
The new service is for people to buy/sell information on people that own certain wallets, anonymously.
It’s like if Dog the Bounty Hunter was a crypto bro. An Arkham user could request specific info about a certain wallet owner and offer a bounty.
Then Dog goes and collects the info, gives it to the buyer, and picks up the money. He could also just auction it to people already seeking info on that particular wallet owner.
Arkham said it’s to incentivize sleuths/researchers to unmask scammy crypto wallets.
But many think it’s a privacy violation and could be used to dox crypto whales (i.e. owners of wallets with a lot of funds.)
That’s why Arkham’s new product is being called “snitch-to-earn.”(A+ name)
Some folks are also worried Arkham’s sharing all this data with the U.S. government.
Arkham Intelligence “We are not a government project”
— Cole (@cole0x)3:19 PM • Jul 11, 2023
Milk Road Take: Doxxing crypto users is a big no-no (unless it’s a hacker or scammer.)
Creating a marketplace to pay people to dox others is even worse.
We think the “x-to-earn” models are cool, but we’ll sit this one out.
(Milk Road Rule #4: Snitches get stitches.)
OWN A PIECE OF A PROFESSIONAL SPORTS TEAM
It’s not every day a life-changing opportunity arises:
- Winning the lottery 🎟️
- The ability to meet the Milk Man 🥛
- A chance to co-own a professional sports team🏅
Well, thanks to SailGP and NEAR, one of these is possible today. They’re opening the door to blockchain-powered, true fan ownership of a professional sports team!
Being an owner takes engagement to the next level:
- Help run the team from anywhere in the world
- Have a say in key decisions - choose a uniform, nickname, and even the team itself!
- Put forward proposals on matters important to you
They’re the first global sports league to amend their rules of participation to allow for a community-owned & managed team (operated by a DAO). And they’re built on NEAR - the blockchain that’s as fast and secure as the Milk Man’s delivery route.
THE FIRST DECENTRALIZED EXCHANGE HACK CASE 👀
Yesterday was a first for crypto...
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged a security engineer in the first-ever decentralized exchange hack case.dun dun duuun
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announces the first-ever criminal case involving an attack on a smart contract operated by a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews)2:56 PM • Jul 11, 2023
Here’s what happened:
Back in July 2022, an unnamed decentralized exchange (DEX) was hacked for $9M.
The hacker then reached out to negotiate a 2-part deal:
1) The hacker would return most of the funds and educate the exchange on its vulnerabilities.
2) The hacker would keep $1.5M (as a “fee”) and the exchange wouldn’t go to the cops.
Eventually, the deal was agreed upon. Or so the hacker thought…
While the hacker was busy laundering the $1.5M “fee” and trying to Google Search their way to freedom, the decentralized exchange was already in contact with the DOJ.
Btw, my researchers tell me the hacker was apparently Googling stuff like:
- “How to stop federal government from seizing assets”
- “How to prove malicious intent”
- “Can I cross the border with crypto”
You can’t make this sh*t up.
Now the hacker’s been caught and is being charged with wire fraud and money laundering.
And without further adieu, we present The Dumbest Criminal of the Year award…
So what? It’ll be interesting to see what kind of precedent this sets.
On one hand: hackers getting caught is a good thing.
More people getting punished = fewer people that want to attack crypto.
On the other hand: it could encourage crypto companies to continue to cut corners when it comes to security because they’ll pull the “I’ll call the cops on you” card.
Who knows what’ll happen.
But if there’s one thing to learn it’s… if you’re gonna commit a crime, don’t Google how to get out of it afterward. (Or if you do, use your sibling’s phone.)
VISUAL OF THE DAY: NEWCOMER CRYPTO DEVS ARE DOWN 💨
We’ve got good news and bad news for you Roaders:
Good news: The number of crypto devs (21,300) is up 90% since 2020. woo!
Bad news: The number of newcomer devs has fallen since last year.
That means devs are leaving the space for something else (damn you, AI.)
So what? Developers leaving the crypto space is bad for the industry long-term.
Sure, prices might be up big these last few months but the devs are the ones that do the actual building.
Without them, it’ll be hard to grow.
This is something we’ll be keeping a close eye on.
MILK & COOKIES 🍪
Gutter Cat Gang (NFT project) got hacked for $750K. Another day, another phishing attack.
Microsoft & Axelar (cross-chain protocol) are teaming up to bridge public & private blockchains. Web2 🤝 Web3.
Vanguard owns $560M worth of stocks in Bitcoin mining companies like Riot. The asset manager is now Marathon Digital’s largest shareholder.
CBOE (a major stock exchange) filed an amendment to its Bitcoin ETF application. It’s now “reached an agreement” with Coinbase to act as custodian.
MILKY MEMES 🤣
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ROADER REVIEW OF THE DAY
VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY
on repeat
— Milk Road Images (@MilkRoadImages)12:32 PM • Jul 12, 2023
DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.
