Battle of the bots: WTF token launch drains 58 ETH

Fees.wtf is a simple service that allows Ether (ETH) users to spend their lifetime on Ethereum blockchain transactions by measuring the gas. You plug in your wallet address on their website and they tell me how much gas you spent.

The project released its token, WTF, in an airdrop on Friday midnight. Essentially, users will be able to claim WTF tokens as well as “Rekt” NFTs for 0.01 ETH. Rekt NFT provides lifetime access to the Pro version of Fees.wtf.

According to their Discord announcement, the initial launch will offer 100 million WTF and “will be the main attraction in circulating supply tokens.” However, it did not go according to plan.

After a series of frantic trading behavior among bots in the early hours of the airdrop, one bot fled with a reported 58 ETH, or $180,000. On Etherscan, 58 ETH was withdrawn from wrapped ETH (WETH) to the WTF liquidity pool.

Social media channels reacted quickly as several airdrop participants mourned the loss of thousands of dollars in ETH. Two hours after the airdrop, the WTF team shouted to calm their ranks:

“There was only a little liquidity immediately after launch and there were app bots that were chucking in the 100s of ETH in a pool containing an ETH or two of liquidity. They also had high slippage and were eventually being sandwiched by other bots. which essentially wiped out all their ETH.”

Basically, within five minutes of the token launch, poor liquidity pool management by WTF developers exposed the liquidity pool. Since there was low liquidity, bots were able to manipulate the price of WTF, then sell for WETH.

The bots will fight it out until a winner takes the pot home. In fact, the bot stole their WTF tokens and Rectangle NFTs from users providing liquidity to the pool trying to claim it. The winners managed to send “ultra-fast transactions over 3,000 Gwei”, giving them a 6x return on their initial investment.

The WTF team sent out another Discord update two hours after the airdrop, saying that “the main contracts are fine, it was a war on Uniswap.” The team further added, “We hope no one is affected by this.” However, as has become a common occurrence in airdrops of late, a lot of users lost a lot of money.

The coin’s price graph since launch depicts a thousand words. The initial spike shows bot activity, which is followed by a 10x loss in bullish price.

The official WTF Discord group is filled with users sharing stories of losing money. Some are “trembling” with anger while death threats and lawsuits are rife.

An Etherscan transaction indicates that a user lost 42 ETH, or $135,000, for 0.000044170848308398 WTF, effectively $0.01.

related: Recurrence of the biggest DeFi hacking incidents of 2021

As daylights on the project, some Twitter users have been calling the project as a Ponzi scheme. The referral element for the project is fake. Referrers of the WTF Project claim 50% on fees “for going viral wtf”, while the WTF team earns 4% each Transfer, Overall, the WTF team claimed nearly half a million in token transfer fees in a little over 8 hours.

Twitter the user Lefteris Karapetsus did not mince his words:

Epilogue.

The WTF “team” made an app any dev can do in 1 hour
slapped a token + ponzinomics on it
Anons went ape without thinking and lost ETH to gas and claim fees
The team has created 116 ETH + 6,168,806 WTF so far. around $855,665 and it’s getting bigger than the other

— Lefteris Karapetsus | Recruitment for @rotkiapp (@LefterisJP) 14 January 2022

The WTF project simply states that the supply of tokens is “deflationary”, and that 40 million WTF tokens will go to their coffers. There is not much detail regarding token distribution. Meows.ETH Ends Its Twitter Thread With A Zen Arrive For the launch of the controversial project:

“If you were lucky enough to claim a large amount of $WTF and redeem it for a profit, be happy. Unless you are trying to reduce initial liquidity, FOMO can be found in new ones with high slippage. Don’t hesitate to buy the launched altcoins.”