Spring 2023: May 22nd
Tuesday, May 16, 2023. You may have seen me post about this on Twitter, but in case you didn’t, I went through that unpleasant initiation that many of us have experienced: my wallet got drained. It happened quickly, and though we’ve all been warned a million times, it happened exactly how you think: I clicked a seemingly legit link from the founder of a company in their official Discord, approved a transaction on a convincing but ultimately malicious site, and in a matter of 15 seconds, had my wallet completely emptied. I went back over to their Discord server and realized that it had been hacked and commandeered. None of the channels were open to post in anymore. I sounded the alarm, called some people who notified admins, and jumped in some Twitter Spaces to tell my cautionary tale. Here’s a Muffinz animation to sum up how it felt:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QeNbmyGjFu4
Amazingly, right after, the two hackers started talking to me. Yes, you read that correctly. They were able to turn on a voice chat channel in Discord and well…started taunting me. “Hey, Buddeeeeeeee….how’s your day going?” *giggle giggle giggle*. They sounded at most 15. Maybe they were 12. It was fun. Though the little assh*le hackers confirmed my general feeling that a lot of people in the world are selfish jerks, the outpouring of compassion and the willingness of others in the Web3 space to help also confirmed something else: that the people I’ve connected with here aren’t like most in the outside world. It’s why I love being in this community so much, where I’ve made more friends than ever in just over a year. So as upset as I was at being violated, I was pretty quickly at peace, thanks to talking to a bunch of you about it. The day ended with the founder of Metaboom, TK, reaching out to me via DMs. After some initial queries to confirm it was actually him (it was), we had a really nice chat over Google Meet, during which he confirmed that their server had indeed been hacked, and in a similar way, by his clicking a link he shouldn’t have clicked. He also wanted to make it right (not something I was expecting!), yet again confirming that they’re a lot of good people in Web3, too. Not everyone and everything is a rug! Woohoo! I already was a fan of their NFT music player, but now I’m an even bigger fan of the people behind it. This inspired my following day’s Muffinz post:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ioKQfUWPtEo
So thank you, friends, for your support and comfort. I will continue to create art, be grateful for all of you & my family, and try to be more positive about the world in general. We may all be suffering a bit through this bear market, but as corny as it sounds, we’ve still got each other! Another big thanks and shoutout to TK and Metaboom for stepping up and going above and beyond. And in a weird way, thank you, hackers, for revealing all that goodness in others – you will never know that joy or the joy of creating art, so I wish you luck in your pathetic f*cking lives!!! Lastly, just to remind us all again…don’t click any links, kids! In the meantime, please follow my high-brow Muffinz YouTube account, especially if you like fart jokes.
Join me on my journey by subscribing to my Mirror and Twitter (@genzomusic), and if you see or hear anything you like along the way, help support me and my collaborators as we all build together (psst, there will be a gift for those who collect full seasons of this blog!). You can also subscribe (minus the ability to collect) on Substack. Thanks for reading!