Twitch Co-Founder Trashes Kotaku Over Their NFT Reporting

Despite billions in VC investment, many web3 crypto platforms are still pretty hostile places for users new to the crypto world, as Justin Kan, a co-founder of Twitch and the person that Justin.TV was named after, learned last week after launching Fractal, a ‘marketplace’ where in-game items could be bought and sold as NFTs. 

Shortly afterwards, Fractal suffered a security breach when a scammer hacked the announcement bot for the startup’s Discord which sent out a fraudulent link to the platform’s more than 100,000 users, urging them to pay up for a new NFT. The message promised users access to 3,333 commemorative NFTs designed to celebrate the platform’s success, but the link was faked with a URL for fractal.is that swapped an “i” for the “l”, taking users to a minting site where funds were taken and they earned nothing in return.

As the news broke, the Fractal team issued a statement acknowledging the hack, and promised to “make this right.”

 

Earlier today, approximately 373 of our community members fell victim to a scam posted on our Discord. We are sorry. We are going to make this right.

The hacker made out with ~800 sol (~$150,000) by managing to post a fake mint link in our #announcements channel. With over 100,000 members in our community, it’s quite impressive that the hacker only managed to dupe .3% of our community.

 

While Fractal’s team seemed to be looking to coach their users in the right direction, the broader issue is that the underlying incentive structure of the NFT market tends to discourage users from engaging skeptically because drops sell out so quickly and there’s a culture of seizing on any and every opportunity, which can be dangerous for less seasoned crypto buyers.

Kotaku, a self-described video game website and blog, quickly reported on the disastrous launch with their usual flair for the negative and dramatic.  

Not sure this is the time to be congratulating yourselves, but go on. Fractal say they are “planning to fully compensate these 373 victims,” before adding the extraordinary warning, “We must use our best judgement as there’s no ‘undo button’ in crypto,” making the entire post read like a textbook example of showcasing why this is such a shitty space.

In response, Kan had the following to add.

No one with any sense disagrees with Justin kan. He is simply saying what most of us think.