Thread by @sainteclectic

With its Fair Launch, beautiful 3D art and an innovative approach the @DegenTrashPanda has been a blockbuster mint.

It has also unfortunately attracted bots & bad behaviour.

It's up to the community to investigate & set standards, so here is what we found & the action taken🧵👇

This thread was made with @DegenDAOO members, many of which took it upon themselves to do research, share info & come together to protect the community.

@NFTjordy @ApeddaddyRick @Funksonait @DegenAbeTrades @SuckMyLiqCrypto. Thank You.

Back to the story.

The @DegenTrashPanda mint launched on Nov 24th. After several delays, excited winners of fair launch tokens started swapping their tokens for trash pandas - people excitedly posted their NFTs and twitter was swarmed with Panda profile pictures.

At the same time, unbeknownst to many, several organized groups had set up bots to snipe super rare and mythic NFTs. These accounts were successful, grabbing some super rare and mythic tokens from under the noses of unsuspecting participants.

While many normal minters did manage to get mythics, there were many that didn't, especially during the quieter times when the mint slowed down & enabled botters to take aim.

I was one of these unlucky people, spending 50 tokens but not minting a single super rare or mythic.

Some of us realized later that some wallets had a cluster of super rare / mythics in them and nothing else. How did these all end up in one wallet together so quickly? A little investigative work showed that they were being minted one after the other, hitting mythic after mythic.

Like everyone the @DegenDAOO community was excited for the mint and keen to introduce our new trash panda frens to our DAO.

When we saw this happen we were frustrated. We were outraged. We had to take action.

So some community members started researching and working together. Exploring Solana block transactions, sharing information, piecing together a story.

We found many bot wallets and traced them back to their source.

Here's what we found. You might want to sit down for this one.

Firstly, we identified some bot wallets sniping mythics and rares. DyqX, 96ke, 9iYv, Cih8 - there were many, many more but we focused on the larger ones.

These wallets had a few acid, gold, zombie, spacesuit, crown and admiral Trash Pandas.

Looks rare? You betcha

Here is a screenshot of one of these wallets, the mythics they sniped and the wallet that funded them.

These were all traced back to a Main Funding Wallet "cntx". This wallet had sent each of its bot wallets 4.2◎. "420", get it?

The @Degentrashpanda @DegenApeAcademy teams & @pit_the_panda were warned & they paused the mint, opening it only in 1 hr intervals.

The culprits were now alerted that the community was on to them.

So they sent funds through a more complicated set of interim wallets to throw people off their trail.

They then sent 1 token to several individual wallets to look less suspicious.

These individual wallets received one token & minted once. 1 token, 1 shot, 1 opportunity... and he mints 1 mythic. 100% hit rate.

On face value you'd think they were just very lucky but these were empty wallets - and we were able to tie them back to cntx. So who funded cntx?

cntx was funded by wallet "crux" having received 420.69◎ ($80k) 2 months ago.

Another "420.69" joke. Are you laughing yet?

crux was funded by wallet "empS" having received a total of 1,305◎ ($250k) via 12 transactions over the course of a month. crux also sent 264◎ back to empS. It is clear that these two accounts are linked.

empS is also directly linked with cntx, sending a rogue shark token between accounts.

So let's recap. empS was the origin account funding crux 1,305◎. crux then sent 420◎ to cntx who funded many wallets 4.2◎. Some of these sniped mythic golds, acid & spacesuit panda.

cntx also funded wallets that had 1 token and minted mythics too. So now what? Who is empS?

Unfortunately it turned out to be a community member. We know this because he posted about acquiring the full set of @pplpleasr1's 13 NFTs, linking "empS" as his own wallet publicly.

This was an incredibly greedy & selfish move that harmed many others.

https://twitter.com/0xempires/status/1458581277645410310?s=20

The wallet names had his modus operandi all over it; picking wallet addresses with words:
- His wallet is 'empS' like empires
- The interim wallet is 'crux' like the crux of the matter
- The funding wallet is 'cntx', a word to describe someone who engages in this type of behavior

This is heartbreaking on so many levels because the @DegenDAOO community has worked incredibly hard to build a safe place, good culture and welcome new members in.

But there are some positives from this:

- This work showed what we could achieve as a community together, piecing the info together within days

- We acted decisively and swiftly. While not legally wrong we have taken action to remove this person from the community effective immediately

- The community remains the same and we are still a fun loving bunch of degens that support each other and the Solana ecosystem and welcome newcomers

Questionable crypto behaviour around NFT mints is not something new. We've seen egregious examples on Ethereum (Galaxy Eggs, the Sevens, Mekaverse).

On Solana we've seen some DAO projects front-run each other while others launch stealth mints, get in early then pump it publicly

But ultimately, what is important is how we address them as a community and move forward - no matter which DAO or group we belong to.

As an update he has deleted his twitter socials.

Here are some interactions with the community member in question:

Thank you to @ape_mountain for his work first discovering all of this.

If you want further research, here are the addresses:

empS wallet:
solscan.io/account/empSHd…

crux wallet:
solscan.io/account/crux28…

cntx wallet:
solscan.io/account/cntxGv…

Might have been a shit thing to discover, but thankful for the strong community support, help and response.

We are so bullish we could get pegged by a bulls horns n feel nothing but gratitude. @DegenTrashPanda

@DegenTrashPanda One of our sleuths @DegenAbeTrades is a @DegenTrashPanda. He just joined NFTs and the trash panda was one of his first. He doesn't own a Degen Ape but wanted to contribute

Thanks to his help we were able to track down many bots. We brought him into the ape channels to thank him