Category: Social media

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Crypto News Ethereum NFTs Social media

Twitter Launches NFT Profile Pic Verification

Delivering on a promise made last October, Twitter has released its official verification mechanism for non-fungible token (NFT) profile pictures. However, it is only available to those who sign up for the “Labs” feature via the company’s Twitter Blue subscription service.

Though the verification tool is initially limited to Ethereum-based NFTs via OpenSea, a Twitter spokesperson says it is simply the “first iteration” of a feature that may support other blockchains in future.

How It Works

Link your Ethereum wallet to your Twitter account, and you’ll be presented with a list of NFTs you own. Choose an NFT, and your profile picture – usually enclosed within a circle – takes on a distinctive hexagonal border. If someone right-clicks on your NFT in an attempt to appropriate it as their profile picture without first buying the token, they will be able to use the image but will be limited to the circle frame.

Still Some Refinements to be Made

A persistent right-clicker might re-upload that same image to an NFT platform, mint a visually identical NFT and use that as their profile picture instead, complete with a hexagonal frame signifying ownership on the blockchain. Twitter has yet to come up with a solution to this advanced form of deception, which has become increasingly common as the NFT space has continued to explode over the past year.

For now, NFT verification is available only for users with Twitter Blue, the company’s US$2.99-a-month subscription service. For NFT fans, it may be a price worth paying.

Twitter is also limiting the release to iOS users but says Android and web users will be able to see when a user changes their profile pics to an NFT.

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Crypto News Facebook Metaverse NFTs Social media

Meta is Experimenting with an NFT Marketplace on Instagram

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is looking to launch an NFT marketplace on Instagram, reportedly drawing up plans to allow its users to create and display NFTs on both their Instagram and Facebook profiles.

Meta Makes More Moves in the Metaverse

According to a report by the Financial Times (FT), Meta will allow its users to create and display NFTs on their profiles, along with a prototype feature for minting tokens in the pipeline. The report comes after Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri admitted it was “actively exploring NFTs and how we can make them more accessible to a wider audience”, and after Meta announced its upcoming metaverse product would support NFTs.

Nothing to announce yet but we are definitely actively exploring NFTs and how we can make them more accessible to a broader audience. I think it’s an interesting place that we can play … and also a way to hopefully help creators.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri

No Particular Blockchain in Mind … Yet

According to the FT report, it is still unclear which blockchain network these features would be built on. At the moment, NFTs exist on several blockchains including Solana, Tezos, Ethereum, Flow and WAX. The report says teams at Facebook and Instagram are looking at NFT integration, with Meta discussing the possibility of an NFT marketplace.

Meta’s digital currency wallet Novi is also said to be a key component in its push into NFTs. Novi is a new crypto wallet used for sending digital payments through WhatsApp, and is currently being trialled for a limited number of people in the US.

However exciting the news, users are urged to keep in mind that the initiative is still in the planning stages.

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Crypto News Ethereum Investing Scams Social media Tokens

Kardashian and Mayweather in Hot Water Amid Lawsuit over Ethereum Max Promotion

What do Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather and Paul Pierce have in common? They’re all getting sued by an aggrieved investor over an alleged Ethereum Max (EMAX) pump-and-dump scheme.

Another Pump and Dump Endorsed by Celebrities?

In a lawsuit filed in the US District Court of California’s Central District, the plaintiff argues that EMAX co-founders Steve Gentile and Giovanni Perone promoted the currency with the help of celebrities such as reality star Kardashian, professional boxer Mayweather, and former NBA basketballer Pierce. As per the filing:

EthereumMax’s entire business model relies on using constant marketing and promotional activities, often from ‘trusted’ celebrities, to dupe potential investors into trusting the financial opportunities available with EMAX tokens.

On May 31, 2021, EMAX’s price peaked at peaked at a price of US$0.000000597636 following the continuous endorsement of these celebrities via Instagram, Twitter, and other social networks. But it dropped over 80 percent in just 11 days.

After the massive drop, its price experienced a few bullish rallies in June after Kim Kardashian promoted the token on her Instagram, but that didn’t stop the token from falling again. In total, the token has lost 97 percent of its value.

While the plaintiff and the rest of investors were buying EMAX, Kardashian and the other celebrities were already selling for considerable profits.

Price history of the EMAX token. Source: CoinGecko

Be Wary of Coins Promoted by Celebrities

Newcomers to the crypto space should be wary when watching celebrities backing up digital tokens from shady developers. These types of currencies are known as “shitcoins” – worthless tokens with no proper infrastructure behind their design, they are rather made to dupe potential investors out of a lot of money.

The developers behind these shitcoins usually promote their product on popular social media platforms such as TikTok or Instagram. In July 2021, former YouTube star Logan Paul was slammed for promoting a shitcoin called DINK DOINK to his 23 million followers on Twitter.

That same month, Crypto News Australia also reported how TikTok had banned users from promoting all things crypto-related on its video-sharing platform, also banning crypto ads.

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NFTs Scams Social media Solana Tokens

MonkeyBall NFT Drop Ends in Disaster with Buyers Losing SOL

A new game being developed on Solana called ‘MonkeyBall’ has caused mayhem as angry investors take to Twitter to voice their concerns about the project.

The project was aiming to drop 5,000 Monkey NFTs on its website on January 7 at 12am AEST. But the launch countdown timer on the website didn’t even finish before a message popped up saying “drop ended”, leaving many users disappointed and angry.

MonkeyBall NFT drop closed before the countdown finished. Source: Twitter

Some users were persistently refreshing the web page, even hundreds of times, and a few were able to create a 2 SOL transaction to mint an NFT. However, the SOL was sent to MonkeyBall but no NFT was returned appearing in the wallet, leaving investors out of pocket.

The subdomain used for the drop (monkeydrop2022.monkeyball.com) did appear in the DNS a few minutes before the official countdown ended, which hackers could have used to exploit the drop and execute mint transactions to chew up the supply.

Failed Token Launch, Failed NFT Drop and Broken Promises

The MonkeyBall team also muted the Discord and Telegram communities throughout the drop, leaving users in the dark as to what was actually going on.

Some YouTubers did some investigative work to try to find out what happened. They revealed several flaws in the drop, including coding errors, bot prevention flaws and whitelist logic ambiguities.

Token Launch IDO Mayhem

This failed NFT drop comes after the project had previously promised the $MBS token launch on Starlaunch IDO, which after investors had put their money in was suddenly delayed without notice, leaving unanswered questions about the project’s integrity.

Starlaunch used Fractal to process the KYC for the MonkeyBall IDO, which experienced some problems, allowing investors to put money into the launchpad – even though they were not eligible to participate from their location – leaving a lot of investors angry and out of pocket.

Was Solana to Blame for the Failed Drop?

The MonkeyBall team has blamed Solana for the failed drop but investors are not buying it, as it appears the Solana blockchain was working fine at the time of mint:

That said, there have been some problems with the network lately after Solana suffered DDOS attacks on January 4, and it did have some downtime.

SOL users have expressed their outrage on Twitter and Reddit. One Redditor, angry for the constant delay, claimed that Solana Status was lying to its users, insisting the network had been working “completely fine” and that the delay problems might be related to slow internet connections.

Is MonkeyBall a Rug Pull?

Crypto News Australia has reported on a lot of scams in 2021 including countless rug pulls from NFT projects, to mention but a few recent Solana-related examples:

While it cannot be proved that MonkeyBall is a rug pull, we encourage investors to be cautious and take note of the red flags that have appeared. We’ve reached out to the MonkeyBall team to get some comments on this.

If you want to find out more, check out these resources:

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Crypto News Hackers Social media Solana

Solana Network Temporarily Down Again After Another DDoS Attack

High-performance network Solana has suffered another DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, specifically at 2:00 am (UTC+8) on January 4:

This is just another of the many exploits Solana has sustained in recent weeks. On December 14, Solana suffered a DDoS attack that jammed the network and caused huge transaction delays.

Outrage Among the SOL Community

The network appears to be back up again following the latest incident, but the continued breaches have caused outrage in the SOL community, who are now complaining en masse about how vulnerable the network is.

SOL users have expressed their outrage on Twitter and Reddit. One Redditor, angry for the constant delay, claimed that Solana Status has been lying to its users, insisting the network has been working “completely fine” and that the delay problems might be related to slow internet connections.


Turns out status dot solana page is lying to its own users. If you go into the Solana official groups, you can see dozens of people complaining about failing transactions, missing balances, transactions not being processed, etc. Users are repeatedly questioning the validity of the status dot solana page that shows 100 percent uptime even when the network was down, and even Coinbase flagged it as down.

Reddit user

‘Slowdown’, Not a Crash

Some users have said that this is just another slowdown instead of a crash. Crypto exchange Coinbase warned users that the SOL network had experienced a momentary downgraded performance with failed transactions that could be retried:

Whatever the cause, most users are complaining about lack of decentralisation and a dearth of security measures in the network.

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Crypto News Crypto Wallets Metaverse NFTs Social media

Instagram CEO Admits It is “Exploring” NFTs

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has revealed the social network giant could possibly integrate NFT features to its platform, as per a Q&A posted on his Stories.

Nothing Official … Yet

During the Q&A, a user asked Mosseri his thoughts about NFTs and if there was any chance they would soon be integrated into Instagram. Messari tweeted that while there’s nothing official yet, the platform is “actively exploring” NFTs and how to take the best out of the space.

Nothing to announce yet but we are definitely actively exploring NFTs and how we can make them more accessible to a broader audience. I think it’s an interesting place that we can play … and also a way to hopefully help creators.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri

Instagram Has Been Working Quietly on NFT Collectibles

Rumours of the Meta-owned photo-sharing giant exploring the NFT market started in early 2021 when digital artist Sean Williams posted a Twitter thread claiming that the app was building an NFT platform and reaching out to digital artists in the community.

It wouldn’t come as a surprise if Instagram announced support for NFTs anytime soon, considering the extant NFT boom and the rapid expansion of the Metaverse, propelled by Facebook’s decision to rebrand itself to Meta.

On top of that, app developer Alessandro Paluzzi has stated numerous times that Instagram was already working towards the integration of digital wallets such as MetaMask, Coinbase and Novi.

Social Media Giants Moving Toward Crypto

The crypto community is witnessing social media giants embracing crypto and blockchain technology, with Jack Dorsey’s Twitter one of the biggest advocates. Twitter Crypto is the name of the recently created team in charge of bringing blockchain, DApps (decentralised applications), and all things crypto to the platform for a variety of use cases.

The NFT space is expanding fast, but of course not everybody is an expert on the topic, a reason why so many scammers are taking advantage of boom to fool naive investors. To help fight theft, Adobe is preparing a tool that will assist users in proving that the person selling an NFT is the actual owner.

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Blockchain Crypto News Ethereum Reddit Social media Tokens

Reddit Launches New ETH-Based Community Points Rewards Program

After picking Arbitrum to scale its Community Points program available currently on only two subreddits, Reddit is now looking to add Community Points to even more subreddits.

After its valuation shot up earlier this year, Reddit intends to expand its Community Points beta, allowing any subreddit to request the ability to create its own token. Reddit released a waitlist for subreddits who wish to do so and has provided additional information regarding its Community Points on its website.

Subreddits Can Have Own Points, Name, Symbol and Token

Reddit Community Points are handed out as rewards for active users in the community and can be given based on the number of upvotes a member receives within a subreddit, whether for a post they had made themselves or a post made on somebody else’s. The expanded Community Points programs will allow each subreddit to have its own Community Points, with a custom name, symbol and token.

Points can have value too and may be sold for other cryptos. The crypto points have value within each respective community/subreddit and can be used to purchase features or engage in community governance. Additionally, the points can also potentially be swapped for other cryptos or tokens at exchanges, or used for external purposes.

Tokens Retain Community Ownership

Reddit adds: “Community Points are the first step towards a different future for online communities … these tokens live on the blockchain, which means they are truly owned by the community. Over time, your community will benefit from even greater control and independence -on and off of Reddit.”

Currently, Community Points run on a test net version of Ethereum, but Reddit is working with Ethereum layer two scaling solution Arbitrum to see if it can run a version of that instead. As it stands, Reddit offers Community Points in the r/Cryptocurrency subreddit, called Moons, and in the r/Fortnite subreddit, called Bricks.

Reddit adds that the goal of introducing tokens to Reddit is that they can be used to incentivise good behaviour or content creation without a specific community. Community Points can also potentially be used in the future to run a community itself – a theme that some users are not entirely happy with.

Reddit Makes More Moves in Crypto

The news of tokens to additional subreddits comes during a welcome time as Reddit busies itself in the crypto world. In October, Reddit fuelled speculation it was getting into the non-fungible token (NFT) craze. A new job posting for a senior back-end engineer even had many wondering whether the social media giant might be building its very own NFT platform.

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Crypto News Ethereum Social media

White Hat Hacker Discovers Twitter Will Soon Integrate ETH to ‘Tip Jar’

A white hat hacker – otherwise known as an ‘ethical’ hacker – has revealed that Twitter will soon integrate Ether (ETH) to the Tip Jar.

The hacker in question is Hong Kong-based Jane Manchun Wong, who discovered that users can receive tips in the form of ETH while not being included on the app.

The tipping function was rolled out in September, allowing Bitcoin tips via the Lightning Network. But it seems Wong managed to find a way to add the ETH address option in the Tip Jar by tweaking the Twitter interface to add Ethereum wallets. There was a user who had managed the feat first when the tipping function went live.

Note that the ETH address option is not available, but this suggests Twitter will soon integrate the option to allow users to receive tips in the form of Ether.

Not the First Time Wong Has Beaten Twitter to the Punch

Wong has previously discovered hidden functions on the social media platform. In early November, she managed to connect her ETH wallet to Twitter and set her Twitter NFT Avatar. Twitter soon blocked her access to the NFT Avatars feature.

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Crypto Art Crypto News Metaverse NFTs Social media

Adidas Joins Forces With Bored Ape Yacht Club and Dives into the Metaverse

Adidas is collaborating with Bored Ape creators Yuga Labs and others in the space to enter the metaverse. And in a show of good faith that has attracted its fair share of derision, the global apparel brand has bought its own Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible token (NFT).

Adidas is also teaming up with NFT collector Gmoney and Punks Comic, a CryptoPunks-inspired unofficial Ethereum NFT derivative project.

Adidas Pays $156k for Single BAYC NFT

According to data from OpenSea, Adidas purchased Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT #8774 in September for 46 ETH, or just over US$156,000 at the time, and will rebadge it as a metaverse character called Indigo Herz. Rabid BAYC enthusiasts have paid as much as US$1.29 million for a single NFT.

Via Twitter, Adidas also recently announced a collaboration with upcoming Ethereum-based metaverse game The Sandbox.

Twittersphere ‘Welcomes’ Adidas to the Metaverse

Speaking of Twitter, reactions to Adidas’s leap into the metaverse have been mixed, to say the least. “We can’t wait to see Adidas in the metaverse,” tweeted Meta, the social media behemoth formerly known as Facebook, which has its own designs on the metaverse.

“This is the Sandbox metaverse, not Mark’s [Zuckerberg’s] metaverse. Or any clarification @Meta on where your metaverse will be?? at the @Roblox maybe? lol,” tweeted @horsesnft.

“Hopefully Adidas decides to stay in the cool parts of the metaverse, not Zuckerville,” tweeted @Lucky5Micah. Or this, from @marmish: “Cringe. So desperate to be cool.”

Summing up the negative responses was this tweet from @NFT_invest: “Good luck bitches! This is our space!”

Asics Beats Both Adidas and Nike to the NFT Punch

Like its primary competitor Nike, which has yet to bring its CryptoKicks patent to market, Adidas has been relatively slow off the blocks in the NFT race. Japanese multinational Asics stole a march on both brands back in July with the launch of its 189-piece digital footwear collection.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Social media

Jack Dorsey Going All-In on Bitcoin After Resignation from Twitter?

Running a public company is challenging enough but up until yesterday, Jack Dorsey was running two – Twitter and Square. After resigning from Twitter with immediate effect, the platform he helped create was abuzz with rumours as to what he had planned next.

Dorsey Leaves the Company He Created

In a tweet characteristic of his laid-back and often understated approach to doing business, he elected to make his resignation email public to the broader community:

Dorsey noted that he felt that being “founder-led” was “severely limiting and a single point of failure”. Parag Agrawal, a former engineer who had worked his way up the ranks over the past 10 years to become CTO, became CEO with immediate effect.

Aside from stepping away from operations, Dorsey also committed to resign from the board to “give Parag the space he needs to lead”.

I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders. My trust in Parag as Twitter’s CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational. I’m deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It’s his time to lead.

Jack Dorsey

Speculation as to Dorsey’s Plans

It has been well-known that Dorsey is a massive advocate for Bitcoin, having uttered the now-famous words at the Bitcoin 2021 conference: “I don’t think there is anything more important in my lifetime to work on”.

From running his own Bitcoin node to rolling out Bitcoin tips on Twitter, to putting Bitcoin on Square’s balance sheet and investing in solar-powered Bitcoin mining, Dorsey is clearly inspired by Bitcoin and its potential to drive change in the world.

Despite this, some have speculated that Dorsey is looking to move into the Web 3.0 space, particularly in light of Twitter’s recent “Blue Sky” decentralised social media project.

Others, however, reckon it’s pretty obvious that he will be working on Bitcoin-related projects and initiatives:

Whatever the case may be, Bitcoin or crypto, the common thread seems to be that Dorsey’s central mission has now shifted towards decentralisation – whether that is of money, applications, or the internet itself.