The WTF token airdrop had a massive launch. Users are reported to have lost thousands of dollars while a bot disappeared with 58 ETH.
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Costs.wtf is a simple service that shows Ether (ETH) users spending their lifetime on Ethereum blockchain transactions by measuring gas. You enter your wallet address on their website and they tell me how much gas you spent.
The project released their token, WTF, in an airdrop at midnight Friday. Basically, users will be able to claim WTF tokens as well as NFT “Rekt” for 0.01 ETH. Rekt NFT grants lifetime access to the pro version of fee.wtf.
According to their Discord announcement, the initial launch will provide 100 million WTF and “circulating supply will be the main attraction in tokenomics.” However, it didn’t quite go to plan.
After a flurry of frantic trading between bots during the opening hours of the airdrop, one bot ran away with a reported 58 ETH, or $180,000. On Etherscan, 58 ETH was withdrawn from the covered ETH (WETH) to the WTF liquidity pool.
Social media channels were quick to respond as many of the airdrop participants lamented the loss of thousands of dollars in ETH. The WTF team flirted for two hours after the airdrop to reassure their ranks:
“At launch, there was only a small amount of liquidity and there were apes moving 100 ETH into a pool with one or two liquid ETH. They also had high slippage and ended up getting clamped by other bots, essentially sucking up their ETH.”
Essentially, within five minutes of the token launch, poor liquidity pool management from the WTF developers exposed the liquidity pool. Because of low liquidity, bots can manipulate the price of WTF to then sell for WETH.
The bots will fight it until a winner takes home the pot. In fact, the bot stole from users who provided liquidity to the pool, trying to claim their WTF and Rekt NFT tokens. The winner managed to send an “ultra-fast transaction at 3,000 Gwei”, generating 6x return on their initial investment.
The WTF team sent another Discord update two hours after the airdrop, saying “Core contracts are fine, this is a fight on Uniswap.” The team added, “We hope no one is affected by it.” However, as has become common in late airdrops, a lot of users have lost a lot of money.
The token’s price chart since launch plots a thousand words. An initial spike indicates bot activity, quickly followed by a 10x drop in value.
The official WTF Discord group is flooded with users sharing stories of losing money. Some “shaken” with rage while death threats and lawsuits abound.
An Etherscan transaction for just one user lost 42 ETH, or $135,000, for .000044170848308398 WTF, effectively $0.01.
Related: Recounting the biggest DeFi hack of 2021
As daylight fell on the project, some Twitter users called the project a Ponzi scheme. The element referring to the project is fake. WTF project referrers claim 50% fee “to make wtf go viral”, while the WTF team earn 4% from each transfer. In total, the WTF team requested nearly half a million token transfer fees over 8 hours.
Twitter user Lefteris Karapetsas does not deny his words:
Synthetic.
WTF “staff” created an app that any developer can do in 1 hour
Smash a token + ponzinomics into it
Anons aped without thinking and lose ETH in gas and request fees
So far, the team has earned 116 ETH + 6,168,806 WTF. Around $855,665 and the number is getting bigger every second– Lefteris Karapetsas | Recruiting for @rotkiapp (@LefterisJP) January 14, 2022
The WTF project just says that the token supply is “deflationary” and that 40 million WTF tokens will go to their coffers. There are not many details regarding the token distribution. Meows.ETH ends their Twitter series with a zen approach to the controversial project launch:
“If you are lucky enough perhaps to claim a large amount of $WTF and withdraw for profit, be happy. Unless you are trying to reduce initial liquidity, don’t FOMO buy a new altcoin launch with high slippage. ”