Founder: Little Shapes Was a “social Experiment” to Expose NFT Botnets

In a 158 paper, the team created Little Shapes said that NFT scammers used bot networks to steal “$200 million or more from the ecosystem.”

Atto, the fake name of the person who founded Little Shapes NFT, has said that the project was a “social experiment” meant to bring attention to large-scale NFT bot network scams on Twitter.

Since the end of December, both the media and the crypto community have paid a lot of attention to Little Shapes. This is because several tweets about events in the founder’s life that sounded too good to be true went almost viral.

He woke up after being in a coma for five months, found out his assets were locked on FTX, told his wife, and then found out she was having a relationship with someone in the NFT industry.

Hey Little Shapes fam, this might sound crazy but I got into a car accident 5 months ago and just got out of a huge coma. I don’t know what’s been going on since then but we’re coming back harder than ever.
You’re only on the start, of the Little Shapes journey <3 pic.twitter.com/rOEEHq0kVN

— Little Shapes NFT (BALLZ) (@LittleShapesNFT) December 28, 2022

But on February 2, the Little Shapes NFT Twitter account told its 30,800 followers, “Thanks to everyone who participated! Little Shapes was a social experiment by @ballznft,” and provided a link to a 158-page document.

“The exposé was real though. Here’s how a ring of influencers and founders drained $200 million+ out of the ecosystem over 274 projects,” Little Shapes NFT said, adding:

“Over the past year, NFT Twitter has been manipulated and controlled mostly by a singular Twitter botnet. It showed up mostly in February 2022, and then was used in conjunction with a network of influencers and alpha groups to sell out projects.”

The title of the document is “The insider NFT bot network that’s been controlling the market behind the scenes.”

It says that since February 2022, a lot of low-level NFT projects have used bot networks to make hype and credibility out of thin air in order to scam investors.

What would happen is a project would come up seemingly out of nowhere, like @MindblowonNFT or @BBRCOfficial, all these influencers would host collab giveaways on Twitter – they would bot it to shit, you’d see the botted numbers and think the project has hype, you mint.

— Little Shapes NFT (BALLZ) (@LittleShapesNFT) February 1, 2023

In an interview with BuzzFeed News on February 2, Atto, the founder of BALLZNFT, called Little Shapes “performance art” and said, “People don’t pay attention unless you give them a reason to.”

““I needed a story that sells to make sure no one would ignore a story that hurts,” he said.

The document says that bot networks like “Dmister,” which sell social media engagement for about $100 per 1,000 likes, retweets, and replies, are a key outlet for NFTs operations.

I can’t condense the whole thing fam it’s 158 pages. Just ask yourself a question – how do projects blow up out of nowhere?
Why’s @ether have 10 tweets and 77,600 followers, when @y00tsNFT has 6,000+ tweets and 107K followers. Think about if that makes sense.

— Little Shapes NFT (BALLZ) (@LittleShapesNFT) February 1, 2023

The BALLZNFT team even used Dmister to promote Little Shapes NFT and show how it works.

Once these schemes have gotten enough attention to attract real investors, they “get rug-pulled or fucked over, usually in the course of a few months, and the people behind the project make $3 or $4 million,” Atto told Buzz Feed, stating:
“What I found frustrating is we’re in a space ranked completely by social capital and fake Twitter engagement where nothing’s real.”

At first, Little Shapes was billed as an upcoming avatar-style project with 4,444 NFTs and a special software “engine” that would let token owners interact with and change the shape of the artwork associated with their tokens in real time.

On the other hand, BALLZNFT seems to be real. The NFT project had its first mint on February 3, and the artwork on the tokens makes references to the whole Little Shapes situation.

BALLZ – the project behind Little Shapes and the botnet exposé
If you want to ensure a spot in our collection, you can support us here:
– refunding all if not minted out within 5 days
– 3 owned = BALLZ airdrop on mint day https://t.co/uI9nfzDRCl
Below /

Content Source: cointelegraph.com

— BALLZ (@BALLZNFT_) February 3, 2023