Let’s talk about the Tornado in the room, shall we? 🌪
Tornado Cash was all over the internet this week. Threads. News articles. Spaces. What not. If you missed it, the DAO’s governance was attacked last week by a malicious proposal. 📑
🗓 May 20, 2023
The attacker pretended to follow a same previous successfully passed proposal, but slipped in an extra function that completely changed the game!
They exploited the emergencyStopfunction to manipulate the proposal logic, and voila! They managed to grant themselves a whopping 1,200,000 votes. 😳
🧐 What did getting all these votes mean?
The attacker gained the ability to withdraw all locked votes.
They could drain tokens from the governance contract and disrupt the project's router.
However, they still cannot drain individual pools, limiting the impact to some extent.
🥲 What did the attacker do next?
Withdrew 10,000 votes as TORN tokens
Sold the TORN tokens & made $4 million
🤯 The BIG TWIST
Looks like the attacker is doing a bit of a U-turn.
They're reversing the TORN tokens they initially acquired, which gave them that commanding share of the governance votes.
In other words, they're bringing their controlling stake back down to zero.
The attacker posted a new proposal to restore the state of governance, and user Tornadosaurus-Hex wrote in the Tornado Cash community forum that there was a "good chance" that the attacker would execute it.
🤡 Just a GIGATROLL?
0xdeadf4ce, a TORN community member, has suggested that this whole situation might be a gigatroll aimed at dragging down the token's price.
The sneaky plan? 👉 To snatch up more tokens at a juicy discount.
Well, troll or not, the community doesn’t even have a vote in it, so we’ll just have to see if they meant it or not. 👀
📝 Thou shalt learneth the lesson
The Tornado Cash attack has given us some important lessons, and it's time to take notes:
Watch your votes: Just like big promises by politicians, proposal logic can be slyly manipulated. Stay sharp, weigh the risks, and make informed decisions before casting your vote. 🏋️♀️
Verify contract integrity: Make sure the contract doesn't have any self-destruct tricks and functions up its sleeve. Take a deep dive into the code, and double-check its security measures before passing it. 👩💻
Although Tornado Cash won’t suffer much as a product because of the governance attack, it’s still a pretty big deal! Again, watch those votes, y’all!
If you liked reading this, feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post or restack it so more people can discover it on Substack 👇
Web3 Shorts 🗞
🦊 Is Metamask collecting taxes now?
People have been scared that Metamask might collect taxes on their on-chain transactions. Well, ConsenSys has clarified that the rumours came from a misinterpretation of their Terms of Service. The tax lingo is only for buying their products or plans, for which there might be a sales tax, just like on Amazon.The rest of your crypto? Safe from the taxman's grasp. 😮💨
MetaMask isn't turning into the crypto IRS! *sighs*
📘 Going Infinite: the Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
Rejoice, crypto nerds! 'The Big Short' author Michael Lewis is turning the FTX meltdown into 'Going Infinite,' a book so juicy you'll think it's crypto pulp fiction. It’ll be a thrilling tale about SBF and FTX until it conveniently exploded last year. We’re waiting for the October release to see Lewis serve up this page-turner.
Oh, and he's not just a spectator—he's got Bitcoin stuck in the FTX debacle too!
🔥 Bill Miller spitting fire
Legendary value investor Bill Miller, known to be bullish about Bitcoin, is making bold statements. Miller revealed that half of his personal net worth was invested in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies last year. Now he’s saying, “Gold is just an inferior version of Bitcoin.”
So can we now call Bitcoin - Gold 2.0? 👀
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