How to unravel the cocoons of a huge scam about Arbitrum, and let the interlocking scams reveal the prototype?
Written by: Dorji
Recently, there has been a scam involving real and fake Arbitrum in the currency circle. And this kind of story, perhaps under the iceberg, is constantly being staged every day.
Fiery Arbitrum: the most sought after Layer 2 ecology
Arbitrum is a Layer 2 expansion solution for Ethereum. It is one of the best solutions using Rollup expansion technology. It is a smart contract that can maintain trustlessness and security at the same time. Compared with Ethereum Layer 1, Arbitrum achieves higher throughput and lower computing cost. According to data from Dune Analytics, the total locked value of ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum Layer 2 network Arbitrum chain has exceeded $9 billion.
Due to the full compatibility between Arbitrum and Ethereum EVM, it records transaction data on the chain, and places calculation and storage on the side chain, which provides higher Liquidity for intensive transaction areas such as payment, DeFi, and NFT, and enables the realization of the Ethereum ecosystem. In order to ensure a high degree of playability, it can be said to be a ticket to change the rules of the game.
Based on this, the Arbitrum ecology has also become the hottest Layer 2 ecology in the past two years. At the moment of Ethereum's new wave of grand narratives, it plays a pivotal role in the DeFi, GameFi and NFT markets. Especially after the governance token ARB entered the game, it set off a wave of macro narratives.
"A message from ArbiFarm"
In Singapore at the beginning of May, Echo (pseudonym) habitually opened the official background before getting off work. Since the beginning of this year, due to the remarkable achievements of the project's Multichain ecological layout strategy, there has been an endless stream of messages seeking cooperation in marketing. Among the tedious private messages, a message from "ArbiFarm" caught Echo's eyes.
"Hello team, I'm the Marketing Officer at Arbitrum Foundation and we are launching the ArbiFarm pool soon... We believe your project can benefit greatly from joining our ArbiFarm pool..."
The project party received information on seeking cooperation from the "Arbitrum Team" in the background of Twitter
Echo is the marketing director of a well-known GameFi project and has been in the Crypto market for many years. At present, their project has entered a period of rapid ecological expansion, and she has shown great interest in the olive branch thrown by "Arbitrum".
Claiming to be from the "Arbitrum" team, "ArbiFarm" is an innovative DeFi platform that provides income for Liquidity Provider and investors by providing an innovative and user-friendly way to participate in Farm pool mining. The "Arbitrum" team is about to launch this mining pool in June. Now they are inviting partners and have prepared a grant of 500,000 US dollars to promote the ecological co-construction of project partners in "Arbitrum".
"ArbiFarm" project Whitepaper
After reading the Whitepaper and verifying the basic cooperation information, the two parties formed a cooperation group on Telegram. The person in charge of the "ArbiFarm" project uses an account named "Laneruhl Elizabeth" with a white female profile picture. She expressed the hope that the two parties can arrange an online meeting to discuss future cooperation, and "Arbitrum's global CEO Steven Goldfeder" will participate in the meeting.
The two sides quickly agreed on a Zoom online meeting time. Although Echo still had doubts about some details, such as why the first conference call "Arbitrum's Global CEO Steven Goldfeder" would end in person, he didn't think too much about it. After all, face-to-face Is there any problem with the online meeting?
Since then, the climax of the scam is coming.
At the time agreed by the two parties, in the Zoom chat room established by the project party, its CEO Edward, marketing director Echo, and technical director Peter (above are all pseudonyms) went online in the meeting room early. More than 20 minutes after the appointed time, "Steven Goldfeder" arrived late. At the same time, "Laneruhl Elizabeth" did not appear on the conference call. After "Steven Goldfeder" appeared, the network suddenly became unstable, and "Steven Goldfeder" quit the meeting room citing broadband problems.
A few minutes later, "Laneruhl Elizabeth" suddenly appeared in the Telegram group, re-established a new Zoom meeting room, and said that "the network problem may be the cause of the link", and everyone re-entered the other party's newly opened meeting link.
In this meeting room, "Steven Goldfeder" has been waiting in the meeting room. Here, although the picture is not very clear due to "network problems", the voice of "Steven Goldfeder" is very clear. Since Echo had a conference call with Steven Goldfeder before, through the sound and picture, it also confirmed that the person sitting opposite was indeed Steven Goldfeder himself.
The person calling himself Arbitrum's CEO "Steven Goldfeder" in a Zoom meeting
During the Zoom communication, "Steven Goldfeder" invited the project team to give a demo demonstration, raised some technical and project development issues for the project, and gave a high evaluation. He warmly invited the project to be transferred to the Arbitrum mainnet. Throughout the Zoom meeting, he also interacted with the project leader in real time.
After the meeting, "Laneruhl Elizabeth" immediately promoted the signing of the cooperation contract. Soon the contract was sent in the Telegram group, which proposed that the two parties jointly build "ArbiFarm". Both parties invested 100,000 US dollars in tokens, "Arbitrum injected into ARFT" (ArbiFarm tokens), the project side injected governance tokens, Cross-chain to Arbitrum, and the EVM multi-signature wallet jointly controlled by both parties was used to create a pool to jointly unite Pledge mining, joint management.
The header page of the bilateral cooperation contract provided by "Laneruhl Elizabeth" on Telegram
It is agreed in the contract that the two parties jointly contribute tokens equivalent to 100,000 US dollars, which will be transferred to the jointly controlled EVM wallet for the creation of the pool
The token "ARFT" of "ArbiFarm" will soon be deployed in "Arbitrum" and become a new token of the "Arbitrum" ecosystem.
It seems that with ARB's rough jade ahead, the future of "ARFT" is undoubtedly full of temptations.
It is also specifically mentioned in the contract that Party A ("Arbitrum") will be responsible for the Cross-chain funds of Party B (the project party), and "Arbitrum" is willing to provide pledge rewards, and within two weeks of technology docking, provide 500,000 US dollars equivalent ARB Grant to promote the construction of the game platform in Arbitrum. (As of writing, ARB was quoted at $1.22 on CoinMarketCap.)
The detailed rules in the contract about providing ARB Grant equivalent to 500,000 US dollars
"Laneruhl Elizabeth" has been urging the advancement of the docking throughout the process, and expressed the hope that the signing cooperation will be completed within this week.
At the same time, "Arbitrum CEO Steven Goldfeder" has never appeared in the Telegram chat group.
After asking for the official email address of the project party, "Laneruhl Elizabeth" sent an official cooperation email through the email address of partnership@arbitrum.foundation, and attached the cooperation form attachment of "ARBITRUM BLOCKCHAIN PARTNERSHIP FORM".
Official partnership email sent through partnership@arbitrum.foundation official address
Undoubtedly, the officially certified mailbox suffix makes the whole incident look more authentic and reliable.
The email also specifically pointed out that "Arbitrum" officially requires compliant KYC certification, and the project party needs to provide the company CEO's passport signature, the company's registered address legal person signature and other information. As an information exchange, the other party also generously provided KYC information such as "Steven Goldfeder"'s passport page, signature information, and "Arbitrum Foundation registration information" to show mutual sincerity and recognition.
KYC cooperation process provided by a staff named "Laneruhl Elizabeth"
The ARBITRUM BLOCKCHAIN PARTNERSHIP FORM cooperation form attached to the "Official Email" is the official KYC certification content required by "Arbitrum"
Passport and signature information provided by "Laneruhl Elizabeth", allegedly "Arbitrum Global CEO Steven Goldfeder"
Arbitrum Foundation registration information provided by a staff member named "Laneruhl Elizabeth"
Under the constant urging and inquiries of "Laneruhl Elizabeth", the project party quickly submitted the KYC information and contract in the Telegram group.
"Arbitrum Global CEO Steven Goldfeder" personally appeared, official email suffix, seemingly compliant KYC process, seemingly professional cooperation framework signing, full of attractive cooperation content, so far, a big network has been paved .
show one's feet
For the excessive enthusiasm from "Arbitrum", the project team is both excited and puzzled.
Peter is the technical director of the GameFi team. Unlike the technical experts who only study technology development, he is also keen on speculating in coins and has a good understanding of the state of the Ethereum ecosystem. While he was happy, he always felt that something was a little strange. Since both are veterans in the industry, Peter and Echo often have interactions and business relationships with the big ecology. Peter feels that they are different from the past when they actively embrace a suitable ecological team. This time, "Laneruhl Elizabeth" urged, "Arbitrum" " Enthusiasm", there is always a "suspect" of holding the thigh in reverse. While their projects are good enough, are they so attractive to Arbitrum? Peter thinks it might not be.
It is a bit sloppy compared with the usual cooperation to settle down for cooperation after only one Zoom meeting. Peter said: "In such a big ecosystem, the first meeting is the global CEO himself, which is unreasonable in the face of no special acquaintance between the two parties."
Faced with the temptation of Grant, which is far beyond the industry's general level, of 500,000 US dollars, Peter was not too excited. He felt that something abnormal must have a demon.
For this reason, Peter also specifically inquired about the public information of "ArbiFarm" on the entire network, but there was no trace of it on Twitter and search engines.
In Peter's cognition, big ecological projects are always planned before they are launched. Why did "ArbiFarm", which will be launched in June, not make a splash on Twitter at the moment of May. Peter sent information about the "ArbiFarm" project to some senior Telegram coin speculation groups, and the group members all said they were unaware of the Arbitrum project.
"The construction of a large ecology should set up an access standard, and then raise your arms, and all kinds of ecological partners will come to submit applications and then select them. This is the fastest, most efficient, and most conducive to marketing. A construction method.” What’s even more strange is that the Arbitrum team, which was supposed to be far away in the United States, actually had the same online communication time as their Singapore team. "Are they all in Asia?" Peter wondered.
What does a liar want to lie to? How to cheat?
Peter guessed that KYC and Cross-chain bridges may be tricky. The tokens of the GameFi project are issued on the BNB Chain and need to be Cross-chain to Arbitrum before they can be injected into the pledge pool. The other party also clearly stated in the contract that the Cross-chain bridge is provided by Party A. In recent years, the Cross-chain bridge has been dubbed as a "cash machine for hackers". It is not difficult to imagine that they can leave all the tokens before the tokens are transferred to the multi-sig wallet through the Cross-chain bridge by leaving a back door. Withdraw coins.
The contract clearly stated that the Cross-chain bridge is provided by Party A, and the pool is also built by Party A, and Party B is given some corresponding rights, such as obtaining token rewards, and the lower left corner of the contract bears the signature of "Steven Goldfeder"
With such doubts, the project team wants to verify the authenticity again. Edward pointed out that the contract has been signed, but they must adhere to a principle that the action of tokens hitting the pool should take place after the official announcement of both parties on Twitter-this is also a cooperation method generally adopted by the industry.
Sure enough, such a proposal was ruthlessly rejected. In fact, it was stated in the contract that technical docking must take place at the forefront.
"Laneruhl Elizabeth" politely refused Edward's proposal to make an official social media cooperation announcement, and said that if your team is not interested in such a cooperation method, you can always find a better cooperation method in the future. This is not a mandatory thing, " Arbitrum” still has many partners
And Echo questioned why "Steven Goldfeder" did not enter the group for further communication. From beginning to end, except for the initial Zoom meeting, "Steven Goldfeder" did not appear. The other party explained that "Steven Goldfeder" does not have a Telegram account.
Coincidentally, as a senior practitioner in the industry, Echo has Steven Goldfeder's Telegram contact information, and after Echo sent the real account to the group, another member of the so-called "Arbitrum team" in the group is named "Markus Carsten But the staff denied it and said it might be someone else.
In response to Steven Goldfeder's Telegram contact information, "Markus Carsten", another staff member of the "Arbitrum Team" in the group, denied it, and said that "Steven Goldfeder" does not have a Telegram account, which may be someone else.
At this point, the scam has become unsustainable. After repeated urgings to no avail, "Laneruhl Elizabeth" silently withdrew from the group in the face of Peter's questioning, and staged the last drama of coercion.
"Markus Carsten, another staff member of Arbitrum in the group," accused Peter of "Laneruhl Elizabeth"'s questioning as a rude behavior, saying that the cooperation plan between the two parties will be terminated. I don't know if I want to force the team to submit by threatening the team. After all, I am facing the temptation of 500,000 US dollars, and it is difficult for many people to give up easily. After seeing that the project party was indifferent, the liar team blocked the Twitter account they had contacted before.
So far, this elaborate scam has been broken.
Afterwards, Edward, Peter and Echo all felt that each other's deceptions were intertwined, which was indeed very confusing, especially the real and fake "Steven Goldfeder" drama was very exciting. But there are some flaws that are also fatal. As long as you are careful enough, it is not easy to be dragged into the quagmire by liars.
Echo also found a loophole. The other party only sent a message through the official website mailbox, and the official email address was suspicious, but at the time, this matter did not attract everyone's attention. Later, Echo tried to reply to the email, but the reply could not effectively reach the address of the other party, which also means that this is a fake address.
Arbitrum co-founder and CEO Steven Goldfeder: This looks like a scam
ChainDD interviewed Arbitrum co-founder and CEO Steven Goldfeder, he said, "I have never heard of this person ("Laneruhl Elizabeth"), it looks like this is a scam."
Regarding the passport information, Steven Goldfeder also made it clear that it was forged. Regarding the fake Steven Goldfeder, he said, "This person really looks like me, or stole a video of me." Steven Goldfeder gave a link address , he believes that the scammer team may have recorded the screen from the video of the blog.
Steven Goldfeder Denies Alleged Arbitrum Worker 'Laneruhl Elizabeth' Says Looks Like a Liar
Steven Goldfeder says the passport information provided by the so-called Arbitrum staff member "Laneruhl Elizabeth" is forged
Steven Goldfeder gave a link address, thinking that the scammer team may have recorded the screen from the blog's video
The scam's selection criteria for victims
Recalling from this, the so-called network problem in the earliest Zoom meeting was the first step of the liar team’s step-by-step chess piece. It may be recorded through screen recording or AI face-changing, and dubbed through sound processing. A wave of civet cats was staged under the noses of the project team Prince-changing magic trick. The network lag has become a powerful excuse for the different frequency of mouth shape and voice.
This is also the most exciting part of this scam, the decent Whitepaper, the email address with the official suffix, "Steven Goldfeder's debut", the passport information to win trust, the temptation to co-build new ecological projects, and the pride of spending a lot of money , intertwined, weaving this scam together.
Of course, there is no perfect crime, and no matter how gorgeous a scam is, there are flaws.
For example, a large ecosystem like Arbitrum generally has strict internal norms and procedures, and scammers show excessive enthusiasm, recognition and some heart-warming rewards in order to gain trust and succeed in defrauding. Constantly urging the rapid advancement of cooperation, intending to shorten the thinking time of the other party. And the so-called heavy money Grant proposed by it far exceeds the general norms of the industry.
In addition, the time zone issue, the Asian schedule of the American team, and the fact that the CEO does not have a Telegram account are all clues.
And these fraudulent teams mostly target some well-known Crypto projects that have been listed and have certain Liquidity.
One is that it is convenient to cash out quickly after getting it, the other is that this type of project has appeals for the big ecology, the third is that this type of project tends to support the Grant of the big ecology, and the fourth is that the general team is not sensitive to differences in English accents and the alienation caused by cultural differences Feeling, easy to get away with it.
Recently, as the market has begun to pick up, L2 ecology and Bitcoin ecology have begun to show signs of hot spots. Some project parties have begun to exert their efforts, and scammers have also begun to move around. Not long ago, a fraud gang created fake FOUR tokens and used the address starting with 0xac82 to pretend to be Justin Sun, and lured people who chase after them by buying a large number of fraudulent tokens FOUR and transferring them to the exchange; similar fraudulent behavior There are endless, Pixiu disks, Ponzi schemes, etc., in the vanity fair of the currency circle, very close to money, and very close to the unattainable desires of the heart.
Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, which are always full of intrigues and absurd stories. The more you are in a place where money never sleeps, the more endless gaps of desire are difficult to fill.
In the ecological Shura field of the currency circle, there are endless fraud problems. There are counterfeit ecological deception project parties, counterfeit project parties to deceive the public, and stealing accounts to defraud, etc. There are various methods. Keep a vigilant and peaceful mind to deal with the turbulent information, and beware of being deceived. ChainDD will also continue to track various latest fraud methods, and welcome to post clues if there is any relevant fraud information.
