Phantom Wallet Unveils NFT Feature, Protecting Users From Scams

Source: Business 2 Community

Hackers and other cybercriminals appear relentless in attacking the DeFi and the non-fungible token (NFT) space, attracting many protocols to explore measures and ways to mitigate these attacks. Phantom, the friendly crypto wallet for DeFi and NFTs on Solana, is a perfect example, launching new NFTs to protect users from possible scams.

In an August 17 blog post, Phantom wallet confirmed the successful launching of its new feature that will burn spam NFTs sent by scammers. The recent mitigation measure appears just a few months after scammers exploited the vulnerability in Bored Yacht Ape Club’s discord servers and conducted a phishing attack that left users losing more than 200 ETH.

Phantom NFT Wallet

Launched in November 2021, Phantom is a non-custodial crypto wallet for NFTs and DeFi on the Solana blockchain. Phantom is dedicated to making it easy, safe and fun for everyone to explore products in the rapidly evolving Web3 space. Unfortunately, as Web 3 continues growing, scammers have invented new tricks to lure users.

According to the team behind Phantom development, the spam NFTs have evolved to become a practical way for perpetrators seeking to steal from DeFi and NFT enthusiasts. The friendly crypto wallet noted in a tweet that scammers had taken advantage of Solana’s low transaction fees and airdrop spam NFTs to users. These spam NFTs tease users and request them to click a phishing link to receive free rewards.

After following the link, scammers redirect users to other sites where they request them to approve other transactions to mint or claim a free NFT, eventually leading to the loss of funds. But interestingly, Phantom has announced a brand new Burn NFT feature to mitigate these attacks.

Phantom’s Burn NFT Feature

Phantom has launched a new feature that will burn spam NFTs from scammers and protect users from scheduled exploits. According to the wallet, users can remove the unwanted NFTs by switching the Burn Token function on their dashboard.

Apart from the new burn feature, Phantom will also use other tricks to fight spam NFTs, including blocklisting the contact address and domain related to the scam the moment they discover it. The phantom wallet will reward early adopters with a small deposit of SOL each time they use this feature.

Remarkably, Phantom has already blocklisted more than 800 mint addresses from malicious NFT collections. Moreover, Phantom anticipates fighting scams through its “phishing warning system, which issues warning to the user on any suspicious transaction that could compromise their asset.

Among the victims that have recently fallen into the trick of scammers include NFT influencer Zeneca, NFT registration platform Premint, and the popular NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), which lost more than 200 ETH in early June.

Moreover, the Solana team tied the widespread hack that had affected over 8,000 wallets and the loss of over $8 million worth of funds to the now closed Slope wallet. Phantom believed the exploit was due to complications related to importing accounts to and from Slope.