OpenSea customer service migrating from Discord to Metalink to more adequately protect its community

Published at: Feb. 15, 2022

On Tuesday, nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, platform OpenSea launched a server on Metalink to give verified owners of its collections a direct channel for support, feedback, and updates. In addition, OpenSea said it would no longer offer customer support over Discord DMs. Metalink is a collaboration app for NFT communities which offers users a place to view their collection's value and monitor its associated real-time transaction feed. In addition, channels hosted on Metalink are token-gated, meaning that proof of ownership of an NFT or social token is required to access content.

According to OpenSea, the platform is making the switch after fraudsters began impersonating support associates on its Discord page. As one crypto enthusiast, @seanbonner writes: 

"[It happens like this,] People go to the OpenSea Discord and post their support tickets. Meanwhile, attackers monitor these channels and then contact people [via DMs] posing as OpenSea support, armed with info about their support claim [to conduct scams]."

In a letter sent to the Metalink community this morning, Stevey Tromberg, Head of Community at OpenSea, stated:

"Our goal is to create a direct channel for you to interact with OpenSea to get support, offer feedback, receive updates, and share any other information that will help us better serve you. We will have dedicated community support staff from OpenSea spending a few hours a day in Metalink. All of whom will be marked as verified OpenSea staff [throughout the Metalink platform]."

Tromberg explained that the onboarding process would begin slowly, starting with owners of Cryptopunks, then Bored Apes, then World of Women, and more. "Without message requests, the ability to see who owns which NFTs, or seamless verification, it's difficult to feel safe on other chat platforms," He concluded.

Blockchain projects have been migrating en mass to social platforms, such as Discord, in the past year in an effort to better communicate with their growing communities. However, there has also been an influx of scammers utilizing sophisticated methods to compromise crypto enthusiasts' funds. In one notable instance, Hong Kong NFT project Monkey Kingdom lost $1.3M after hackers first breached Grape, a popular software for verifying users on Solana (SOL).

They used the exploit to take over an administrative account from the Money Kingdom staff, which in turn posted a phishing link in the Monkey Kingdom Discord's announcement channel. Some users who clicked on the link connected their wallet to a fake website thinking they were purchasing NFTs for an upcoming drop, but then were drained of their funds.

Tags
Adoption
Nft
Business
Cryptocurrencies
Hacks
Scams
Related Posts
Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs stolen in Instagram phishing attack
As told by Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) developers on Monday, hackers breached the popular nonfungible token (NFT) collection’s official Instagram page and shared links to a fake airdrop with the project’s followers. Crypto enthusiasts who connected their MetaMask wallets to the scam website were subsequently drained of their Ape NFTs. It appears that the attack was planned to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the launch of the BAYC collection, thus increasing the “perceived credibility” of the phishing link. Unconfirmed reports on social media indicate that approximately 100 NFTs were stolen during the phishing attack. Based on data from …
Adoption / April 25, 2022
Crypto giants co-launch Chainabuse platform to water down rising scams
Seven major crypto companies — Binance.US, Circle, Solana Foundation, The Aave Companies, Hedera, TRM Labs and Civic — joined hands to launch a community-driven scam reporting tool. Named Chainabuse, the tool aims to enable crypto users to issue warnings and discuss ongoing fraudulent activity such as scams and hacks in real-time. Launched on Wednesday, the Chainabuse platform aims to counter the ongoing scams plaguing the crypto ecosystem. On May 4, Cointelegraph warned the community about the rise in Ape-themed airdrop phishing scams. Chainabuse serves as a one-stop-shop platform for crypto users, victims of financial crimes and crypto businesses to actively …
Adoption / May 18, 2022
5 sneaky tricks crypto phishing scammers used last year: SlowMist
Blockchain security firm SlowMist has highlighted five common phishing techniques crypto scammers used on victims in 2022, including malicious browser bookmarks, phony sales orders and trojan malware spread on messaging app Discord. It comes after the security firm recorded a total of 303 blockchain security incidents in the year, with 31.6% of these incidents caused by phishing, rug pull or other scams, according to a Jan. 9 SlowMist blockchain security report. Malicious browser bookmarks One of the phishing strategies makes use of bookmark managers, a feature in most modern browsers. SlowMist said scammers have been exploiting these to ultimately gain …
Blockchain / Jan. 10, 2023
Ethereum white paper predicted DeFi but missed NFTs: Vitalik Buterin
Rounding up the last decade, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin revisited his predictions made over the years, showcasing a knack for being right about abstract ideas than on-production software development issues. Buterin started the Twitter thread by addressing his article dated Jul. 23, 2013 in which he highlighted Bitcoin's (BTC) key benefits — internationality and censorship resistance. Buterin foresaw Bitcoin’s potential in protecting the citizens’ buying power in countries such as Iran, Argentina, China and Africa. However, Buterin also noticed a rise in stablecoin adoption as he saw Argentinian businesses operating in Tether (USDT). He backed up his decade-old ideas around …
Adoption / Jan. 2, 2022
STEPN impersonators stealing users' seed phrases, warn security experts
Peckshield, a prominent blockchain security firm, exposed the existence of numerous phishing websites for the Web3 lifestyle app STEPN on Monday. Hackers insert a forged MetaMask browser plugin through which they can steal seed phrases from unsuspecting STEPN users, according to Peckshield. When these cybercriminals obtain the seed phrase, they gain complete control over the STEPN user's dashboard where they may connect their stolen wallets to their own or "claim" a giveaway as per Peckshield. #PeckShieldAlert #phishing PeckShield has detected a bath of @Stepnofficial phishing sites. They insert a false Metamask browser extension leading to stealing your seed phrase or …
Adoption / April 25, 2022