4th July 2024 > > Wallet Guard.

tl;dr

Take a very small amount of time and add Wallet Guard to your list of home defences.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

That is a clear and definite breach of $60k to the downside, which is most disappointing.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Web3 safety

One of the key dangers of Web3 is the risk of signing a malicious transaction which will siphon away assets stored in your Web wallet. These fake transactions are often the result of a phishing attack with fraudulent links embedded in scam emails or scam websites. These attacks are equally as successful against hot and cold wallets, for the very simple reason that most of us will not check the exact details of every transaction before we sign it. That point of failure applies equally to signing with a mouse-click in MetaMask, or with a double click on your Ledger Nano connected to MetaMask.

There have been many scary stories of the loss of large amounts of cryptos, or valuable NFTs, funding the murderous desires of Putin or the excessive consumption of the ridiculous Kim Jong-Un. A key mitigation is to only ever use one specific hot wallet when interacting with Web3, a hot wallet that only ever has the crypto you need at the time to do whatever it is you want to do.

But this approach takes some effort, and a lot of discipline. I admit I don’t always fully adhere to this rule, though my Ledger Nano is always kept a long way away from any Web3 application.

In the past, as regular readers know, I have recommended the Fire extension which checks all transactions before you sign them. It works well, though I have read that it may soon be discontinued. It is still available, so get it whilst you can:

https://www.joinfire.xyz/?/utm_source=extension#how-it-works

However, with a limited life-span, we need another option, and this looks good:

https://www.walletguard.app/

Again, it works as an extension to your browser (preferably Brave) with some pretty obvious warning signs if a potential transaction is fraudulent:

Consensys, the maker of MetaMask, has announced the acquisition of Wallet Guard, to integrate into MetaMask. MetaMask and Infura Business lead, Patrick Berarducci, explains:

“Users will be protected from the ever-evolving threats in our ecosystem such as malicious DApps and scams through advanced phishing detection, web scrapers, and blocklist and transaction analysis APIs that allow for an advanced scam detection.”

The timing of the integration of Wallet Guard into MetaMask is unknown. Meanwhile, it takes less than a minute to add Wallet Guard to your browser.

DIN (Do it Now!) as we say at CC Towers.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Not convinced?

Someone lost a quarter of a million dollars of NFTs, including 6 BAYC, to a phishing scam executed on Blur, that transferred 48 NFTs to a scammer for 1 wei each:

https://x.com/0xQuit/status/1808310280906330607

Fire - DIN!

Wallet Guard – DIN!