Cryptomustar
Friday, May 20, 2022
  • Home
  • Altcoin
  • Bitcoin
  • Ethereum
  • Litecoin
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Blockchain
  • Regulation
  • Market
  • Prices
  • ICO
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Altcoin
  • Bitcoin
  • Ethereum
  • Litecoin
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Blockchain
  • Regulation
  • Market
  • Prices
  • ICO
No Result
View All Result
Cryptomustar
No Result
View All Result
Home Blockchain

What Yearn Finance’s ‘Blue Kirby’ Incident Means for Pseudonymity

by admin
October 13, 2020
in Blockchain
0
What Yearn Finance’s ‘Blue Kirby’ Incident Means for Pseudonymity
0
SHARES
4
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


Satoshi Nakamoto proved a pseudonymous founder doesn’t have to be a deal breaker. Blue Kirby, however, has reminded cryptocurrency investors that fake names can still be a red flag. 

For those who didn’t spend last weekend on Crypto Twitter, Blue Kirby is the handle of a now-infamous figure in the decentralized finance (DeFi) community who appears to have absconded with some $1 million worth of ether (ETH).

As detailed in two worthwhile reads, DeFi community members allege Blue Kirby unfairly exercised influence over the Yearn.Finance ecosystem and then conducted a questionable initial coin offering (ICO) for a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace called “Off-Blue.”

While the above sentence may sound to normies like so much word salad, the Blue Kirby fiasco marks the latest in a series of cautionary tales from 2020’s “DeFi Summer.” The episode shows how – absent compensating factors – permissionless technology, pseudonymous identities and borderless marketplaces can make a combustible mix. 

Without skin in the game, Blue Kirby had little incentive to act in community members’ best interest in the long term, crypto industry members said. And without a real name, they now have little recourse.

Out of the blue

According to Set Protocol’s Anthony Sassano, Blue Kirby created his online persona in the early summer months, riding on the back of Andre Cronje’s wildly successful robo-crypto hedge fund Yearn.

The pseudonymous token cheerleader quickly rose through the ranks of DeFi community members on Twitter as witnessed in community allocation of $7,000 per month for his tireless promotion of the YFI token.

Blue Kirby’s poor judgment came to light over time, beginning in late September with the botched release of Cronje’s Eminence, a new DeFi contract. Although Eminence had yet to be audited – as fits Cronje’s tagline: “I test in prod[uction]” – Blue Kirby encouraged users to deposit funds.

Some $15 million poured into the contract in no small part from Blue Kirby’s direction. Almost like clockwork, a hole in the contract was soon exploited an the attacker drained all the money While $8 million was eventually returned to YFI holders, Blue Kirby’s reputation took a hit.

Then, Blue Kirby doubled down by doing the unthinkable: he (or she, or they) sold their YFI tokens at $22,000 per coin for about $550,000 total. 

Typically, selling financial assets is a personal decision. But that’s not the case in Weird DeFi where the proportion of token holdings to stylistic “pump it” tweets directly correlates to community acceptance (though this sentiment is perhaps not unique to any one part of the cryptocurrency market). Selling YFI placed negative pressure on other community members’ token holdings, in turn earning Blue Kirby scorn. 

The token has fallen some 25% since that time, to $16,889, according to Messari.

Blue Kirby concluded his three-month DeFi career with a play out of the old playbook: An ICO of his Off-Blue governance token. 

The platform raised some $800,000 in ether before its NFT host Rarible shut down the marketplace on Oct. 10.

“People presumably understood that Blue Kirby was going to disappear with their money. This resulted in a lot of feedback we received from users, warning us about the potentially dangerous long-term impact of this sale,” Alexander Salnikov, co-founder and chief product officer at Rarible, told CoinDesk in an email.

Surprisingly, the ICO is currently offering refunds, but not before a public doxxing campaign went forward on the anarchic message board 4chan identifying at least one individual as the human face behind Blue Kirby. Attempts to reach that person for comment were unsuccessful, and it has not been conclusively proven that he is indeed Blue Kirby.

Community reactions

The Blue Kirby saga highlights yet again the challenges created by pseudonymity in cryptocurrency markets. Indeed, Chef Nomi of SushiSwap, shielded by an avatar, engaged in similar behavior in September.

Cryptocurrencies themselves were made possible only through anonymity or pseudonyms, Erik Voorhees, longtime bitcoiner and founder of exchange ShapeShift, told CoinDesk in an email. (The identity of Nakamoto, the creator of original cryptocurrency bitcoin, has never been conclusively determined after years of speculation, and yet the asset remains the sector’s most valuable with a $216 billion market cap.) An identifiable leader, after all, is arguably a single point of failure for a technology that depends on having none. 

If given a second chance, Voorhees said, he would consider starting ShapeShift anonymously.

“Being anonymous can be very helpful to a project, but obviously people should tread carefully before reputation is established,” he said. “The problem with Blue Kirby wasn’t that he was anonymous, but that he was new. The account came out of nowhere and people threw money at it.”

In other words, investors didn’t necessarily have to know the name on Blue Kirby’s birth certificate, but they needed to know something about the person other than that his handle was inspired by a Nintendo character.   

“Fools and their money are soon parted, as they say,” Voorhees added.

DeFi designer Richard Burton told CoinDesk that DeFi projects and investors should look for long-term incentive plans for developers similarly found in startups.

“It seems that so many of the issues we see could be solved with simple vesting contracts. If you want to demonstrate your long-term commitment, prove it,” Burton said.

Voorhees and Burton’s sentiments were echoed by independent researcher and pseudonymous figure Hasu, who called pawns of Blue Kirby “victims of the halo effect” in a Telegram message.

Read more: Why CoinDesk Respects Pseudonymity: A Stand Against Doxxing

As a pseudonymous community member himself, Hasu said that he has had “0 disadvantages” from his chosen angle of public interaction.

“People in this space generally evaluate you based on what you say and what you do. In general, I think, every successful pseudonymous account makes it even easier and more socially acceptable for those that come after it,” he said.





Source link

RELATED POSTS

las aplicaciones DeFi de Terra han perdido $28.000 millones

Coinbase Co-Founder Fred Ehrsam Buys the Dip, Purchases $75M of Company Stock

Tags: BlueFinancesIncidentKirbymeansPseudonymityYearn
ShareTweetShare

Related Posts

Terra’s LUNA Has Dropped 99.7% in Under a Week. That’s Good for UST

las aplicaciones DeFi de Terra han perdido $28.000 millones

by admin
May 20, 2022
0

"Se ha perdido la confianza, pero en caso de compensación por pérdidas y devolución de fondos, hay posibilidades de...

Coinbase Co-Founder Fred Ehrsam Buys the Dip, Purchases $75M of Company Stock

Coinbase Co-Founder Fred Ehrsam Buys the Dip, Purchases $75M of Company Stock

by admin
May 20, 2022
0

Last week’s purchases came with Coinbase shares tumbling more than 70% in 2022, and off more than 80% from...

Bitcoin Heads for Record 8-Week Losing Streak

Bitcoin Heads for Record 8-Week Losing Streak

by admin
May 20, 2022
0

Put/call ratios for bitcoin open interest hit a 12-month high of 0.72 Thursday, research firm Delphi said in a...

Unpacking CTV and How It Would Change Bitcoin

Unpacking CTV and How It Would Change Bitcoin

by admin
May 20, 2022
0

When you send a Bitcoin transaction currently, it goes a little something like this: You acquire an address from...

Elon Musk Offers to Buy Twitter

Crypto Should Meet Same Norms as Regular Finance, G7 Says

by admin
May 20, 2022
0

Finance ministers want to see financial-stability and money-laundering standards in effect soon. Source link

POPULAR NEWS

4 Cryptocurrency that Blow Bitcoin Out of the Water

4 Cryptocurrency that Blow Bitcoin Out of the Water

September 25, 2020
Memoriae – Next Generation of Decentralized Cloud Storage Based on Blockchain

Memoriae – Next Generation of Decentralized Cloud Storage Based on Blockchain

July 1, 2021
Apollo CBDC: The CBDC Platform that can Power Economies

Apollo CBDC: The CBDC Platform that can Power Economies

October 6, 2020
Stratus: The Most Feature Rich Social Media Network

Stratus: The Most Feature Rich Social Media Network

September 9, 2020
Binance Coin (BNB) erupts above $270 as the whole Smart Chain ecosystem soars

Binance Coin (BNB) erupts above $270 as the whole Smart Chain ecosystem soars

February 19, 2021

EDITOR'S PICK

Sentiment sinks to 4-month low, is it time to accept crypto winter is here?

Sentiment sinks to 4-month low, is it time to accept crypto winter is here?

May 9, 2022
Gwyneth Paltrow says she’s bullish on Bitcoin

Gwyneth Paltrow says she’s bullish on Bitcoin

December 21, 2021
Bitfury Hires Former Binance US Chief Brian Brooks as CEO: Report

Bitfury Hires Former Binance US Chief Brian Brooks as CEO: Report

November 4, 2021
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Crypto News and Price Data

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Crypto News and Price Data

November 11, 2021

About

We publish a comprehensive news feed covering all news relevant to the crypto user, covering main industry news, politics and regulation as well as consumer-level “news you can use” (practical stuff), including handy DIY tips, links to useful tools, unbiased reviews and opinions revolving around cryptocurrency. Simple logic and real-world examples are preferred before technical jargon and personal rants.

Follow us

Categories

  • Altcoin
  • Bitcoin
  • Blockchain
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Ethereum
  • Litecoin
  • Market
  • Press Release
  • Regulation
  • Uncategorized

Recent Posts

  • First a Hum and Then a Bang –Niagara Falls Residents Forced to Reckon With Crypto Mining
  • Grow Marketing Company Supplies Entrepreneurs with Practical Business Information
  • Bitcoin Returns Above $30K; Resistance at $35K
  • las aplicaciones DeFi de Terra han perdido $28.000 millones
  • About Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us

© 2020 cryptomustar.com

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Altcoin
  • Bitcoin
  • Ethereum
  • Litecoin
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Blockchain
  • Regulation
  • Market
  • Prices
  • ICO

© 2020 cryptomustar.com

  • YAM v2YAM v2(YAMV2)$4.70-1.41%
  • yfBetayfBeta(YFBETA)$4.27-0.10%
  • IDLEIDLE(IDLE)$1.44-12.39%
  • WPP TokenWPP Token(WPP)$0.006826-3.49%
  • DSLA ProtocolDSLA Protocol(DSLA)$0.003681-6.85%
  • lympoLympo(LYM)$0.004392-4.43%
  • Werewolf CoinWerewolf Coin(WWC)$0.098082-2.58%
  • PolkaBridgePolkaBridge(PBR)$0.439784-6.92%
  • Dev ProtocolDev Protocol(DEV)$1.76-16.14%
  • EvidenZEvidenZ(BCDT)$0.122949-3.85%