Twitter vigilantes unmask major attack on Ethereum’s DeFi

Alleged Twitter vigilantes track them down cryptocurrency scammers. Earlier last month, a user posted an alert message to the network, which sparked a stormy storm in the world of digital currencies. The account was browsing under the nickname of Gabagool.Eth, as if to refer to the sopranos and the blockchain Ethereum. His profile picture was a fuchsia nebula.

Gabagool.Eth’s mission is to denounce a malicious maneuver that allegedly took place in the field of decentralized finance or DeFi. The DeFi ecosystem contains a myriad of blockchain-based applications, and offers cryptocurrency lending and trading services. The creators of DeFi protocols use the organization of « airdrops » in order to retain their users.

Completely unforeseen token distributions would take place, often to the benefit of users who have deposited a certain amount of cryptocurrency into the network. As a reminder, the service called Ribbon carried out such an airdrop in May by distributing 30 million Ribbon tokens to 1,620 wallets.

Suspicious cryptocurrency transactions

Tokens distributed by the Ribbon service could not be redeemed until October 8. So, on that date, the Gabagool whistleblower spotted something suspicious. a group of 36 users having received the Ribbon tokens quickly proceeded to the exchange with the popular Ethereum cryptocurrency. After exchanging the tokens, they transferred the newly acquired currency to a single cryptocurrency wallet.

According to Gabagool, the people holding this wallet probably created the 36 Ribbon accounts shortly before the token distribution in order to maximize their chances. According to the whistleblower’s calculations, the wallet to which the tokens were transferred accumulated at least 652 ETH, or $ 2.3 million.

The identity of the person responsible for the operation revealed?

In cryptocurrency trading, this kind of shenanigans is not unusual. Gabagool, thanks to his investigations, seems subsequently to have succeeded in find out who owned the wallet. To do this, it cross-checked the address with information from Twitter and the ENS Domains cryptocurrency registry.

Gabagool therefore concluded after his research that the wallet belonged to Bridget Harris, a young employee of Divergence Ventures. It is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that has invested in more than 50 cryptocurrency projects, including Ribbon. Gabagool found this practice to be dishonest and wanted to draw everyone’s attention to the fact.