Bitcoin Ordinals are “sats” or satoshis that have been ordered and inscribed with a piece of information, such as text or an image. This piece of information makes the sat unique and turns it into a de-facto NFT.
Ordinals gave Bitcoin a way for creators to “sign up” NFT-like digital media and later meme tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain, but along with substantial growth has come the same type of scams and exploits that have thrived on other platforms. Last week, the Ordinals space saw what some users describe as the largest such attack to date.
New Token Meme ORNG
On Friday, a new token meme project called ORNG was launched, offering users the ability to mint a fungible BRC-20 token via the Ordinals protocol. It was implemented on what appeared to some users to be a genuine Ordinals launch pad site called Luminex.
But not period Luminex, and apparently the mint were not legitimate either. It was launched through a copycat worldwide website called “Luminux” (note the sly vowel change), and soon Twitter users were complaining that their Bitcoin wallets were depleted after believing they had signed up for a transaction to mint the new meme token.
It’s an acquainted story in the world of Ethereum NFT and token drops, and such “wallet-draining” scams come in various forms. Sometimes, it is a phishing-style attack in which a manipulated net site is created that looks like an authentic net site or official marketplace. Other times, such scams are spread through a hacked Twitter account of a notable creator or brand.
It’s unclear exactly how much was stolen in the attack, but the wallet tied to the scam took about 2.37 bitcoins-or about $63,000 by value primarily on Friday, with fewer transactions recorded over the weekend.
Since Friday’s launch, the Twitter account linked to the scam has rebranded to try to present another potential scam, with the same fake “Luminux” landing page tweaked to promote a new token coin. It is still unclear who was behind the scam mints.
Warnings from Luminex and Bitcoin Xverso
Wallet creator Luminex and Bitcoin Xverso were among the companies that warned users about the scam and tweeted details on how to avoid falling for similar attempts. A Luminex spokesperson said Decipher warned its community “within minutes” of the scam’s launch.
Like similar Ethereum scams that have drained countless millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies from unsuspecting users, it often involves people acting too quickly to take advantage of what they think will be an opportunity to make some money.
That “fear of missing out,” or FOMO, often leads cryptocurrency traders and NFT to overlook potential red flags. In this case, the growing hype around Ordinals projects and BRC-20 tokens, including the recently publicized launch of the OXBT token, may have tripped up over-eager miners.
Scams often travel in waves of popular projects, as seen here,” said the Luminex spokesperson decipher that we always encourage our community to verify URLs and wait for official announcements before joining new projects.
By Marina Meza
