I, Degen

In this week’s episode, we take a deep dive into an NFT mint bot storm that took down the Solana blockchain for seven hours. We also look at the Bored Ape Yacht club's Otherside metaverse land sale and its brutal impact on Ethereum gas fees.

Show Notes

I, Degen - E6: Mint Bots Deliver 7hr KO to Solana & Otherside NFTs Push ETH Gas Fees to Highs - 5/6/22

Listen at: idegen.fm
Contact us: @idegenfm 

Intro
Welcome to I, Degen - Each week, we track down and explore the most exciting crypto stories. Hacks, mysteries, exploits, and anything that feeds our crypto curiosity.

Welcome degens! Come one, come all.

I,Degen - Weekly

  1. Binnance and sequoia revealed as investors in backing Elon Musks twitter purchase

  2. Bloomberg reports Argentinian banks are now BANNED from offering to purchase of digital assets to their customers. Making two Argenenian banks backtrack on their current plans.

  3. ENS (Ethereum Name Service) NFT’s have overtaken Bored Apes in daily trading volume

  4. US Court orders Bitmex founders to pay 30 million in fines for illegal trading

  5. Cronos Defi project MM Finance suffers a 2 mil hack through a malicious contract. The company has promised to reimburse all users affected

  6. The Block, formally known as square posted Q1 earnings and processed 1.7 Billion in Btc transaction but looks to have not recently purchased BTC to add to their balance sheet.

  7. Bug exploited the Fuse protocol used by DeFi platforms Rari Capital and Fei Protocol to steal more than $80 million. - Security Affairs

I,Degen - Deep Dive

Solana Blockchain’s 11th outage, 7th of 2022.- Solana Incident Report

What: May, 1st - 4M transactions per second, initiated by NFT minting bots, took down Solana blockchain by preventing nodes from reaching consensus. The bots were targeting the Metaplex Candy Machine.

What is Metaplex?
Allows users to mint and sell NFTs.

On securing the network, from their site:
Security
Prevent bots from interfering with NFT sales with decentralized architecture, Certified Collections, and CAPTCHAS.
Metaplex poses a solution charge a tax/fee on failed TXs.

Based on a Twitter poll on the same thread with the solution, 5k votes total. With 75% no, and 25% yes.

The speculation was that:
“Eth & AVAX maxi’s voting no”
“Bots voting no”

However, the proposed solution looks like an anti-pattern!
There is a chance that a real user could hit one of these cases, especially in # 2 (Trying to mint when there are no items left in the candy machine). But we think these will not be frequent.
This is not a fool proof fix, and it will not completely stop congestion but we belive it has a substantial enough impact to attempt it.
How does Solana Consensus Work?
leewayhertz.com explains

I, Degen - Freestyle Convo
BAYC Otheside Metaverse Land Sale Pushes ETH gas fee to new high.

175M on fees total, many of which failed

  • The Otherside Metaverse NFT mint spearheaded by Yuga Labs is thus far the largest in blockchain history
  • 55,000 Otherdeeds NFTs were sold for a flat rate of 305 Apeocin, raising $320 million using an APE value of around $19
  • The mint congested the Ethereum network raising network fees to as high as 8,000 Gwei
  • Some users paid as much as $7k in fees
  • Roughly 64k Ethereum in transaction fees was consumed during the mint
    The floor price for Otherside NFTs had gone as high as 5 ETH on OpenSea
^^ From Eth World News

UPDATE: They did refund gas fees to failed TX holders

Mental Gymnastics Required to Justify ETH Fees

We do our best to report accurately on the topics we discuss, but we’re not always going to get everything right. Please comment here or reach out to us @idegenfm with corrections or comments!


Full Show Notes:
https://hackmd.io/@idegen/I-DEGEN-E6-Mint-Bots-Deliver-7HR-KO-to-Solana

What is I, Degen?

Welcome! I, Degen is a podcast about crypto technology, security, and culture. With a healthy balance of enthusiasm and skepticism, we cut through the misinformation and hype in search of a signal in the noise. Our weekly round-up will keep you updated on the latest in crypto hacks and security. With our open-source audio audits, we interview founders and hackers to surface relevant info about how to stay safe in crypto land.