Pixel Penguins Dupes NFT Influencers with Pretend Most cancers Ruse

Deep within the murky underbelly of Web3, the place undesirables resort to devious techniques to earn a fast buck, one challenge has set a brand new low. A scammer peddling “Pixel Penguins” hoodwinked quite a lot of NFT influencers with a pretend most cancers story as a way to promote their NFT collection.

Launched in February 2023, the Pixel Penguins challenge initially failed to realize any traction with its 10okay NFTs. Nevertheless, its founder, going by the names hopeexists1 and Sarah, had already hatched a extra nefarious plan to get issues up and operating.

Working by the aspect know because the ‘NFT influencer,’ Sarah started to weave a story involving most cancers, pricey remedy, and the removing of an eye fixed. Again in April, Sarah scored her first break when an Azuki collector named Levi picked up her story, scoring her modest positive aspects.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t till Andrew Wang, an ‘influencer’ with over 100okay Twitter followers, go concerned that issues actually started to take off. On Could 31, Andrew posted a thread outlining Sarah’s plight, indicating that he personally knew the artist and had interacted inside her sphere of affect.

Following the Tweet, the Pixel Penguins challenge shortly bought out and commenced trending on OpenSea.

I awakened immediately to see one in every of my mates trending on twitter, @Hopeexist1. she made a set to assist herself battle most cancers and a few superior web3 folks spotlighted her immediately, so i would like so as to add to it 🧵 pic.twitter.com/Fr5Mcu26eR

— andrew wang (@andr3w) May 30, 2023

Pixel Penguins Attracts Too A lot Consideration and Begins to Unravel

As information of the Pixel Penguins sudden rise started to flow into, much less gullible members of the NFT neighborhood started to research. What they ultimately unearthed was a path of stolen artwork, pretend most cancers claims and shady interactions.

In keeping with legendary crypto sleuth, ZachXBT, the challenge made off with 61.686 ETH ($117okay) which has since been transferred to 2 recent addresses. Buying and selling of Pixel Penguins has now been disabled, and all web sites and social media associated to the gathering have mysteriously vanished.

At the moment @andr3w supported a charity challenge rug by @hopeexist1 somebody supposedly battling most cancers inflicting the challenge to mint out.

“I’ll put my rep on the road to say that is for actual amidst all of the scams in our house”

It seems she stole the artwork and deactivated her account. pic.twitter.com/q4HivGBLMY

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) May 31, 2023

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