The Solana wallet fires up the grill to burn spam NFTs out of existence

by · August 17, 2022

Solana-based wallet provider Phantom has launched a new burning feature that allows users to remove spam non-fungible tokens (NFT) sent by fraudsters.

According to a blog post by the Phantom team on August 18, the new feature is available via the Burn Token tab in the Phantom wallet app, allowing users to receive a minimal deposit of Solana (SOL) each time they use it.

“We’re still in the Wild West days with Web3. As the crypto ecosystem grows, so does the number of bad actors looking for ways to steal user funds. The rapid growth in popularity of NFTs has led to an increasingly widespread attack method for fraudsters – Spam NFTs.

Phantom noted that the problem has been particularly prevalent on Solana due to its low transaction fees, with bad actors often sending seemingly free NFTs en masse containing malicious links.

Spam NFTs usually ask the recipient to click on a link to create a free NFT, but if they complete the process, the money ends up being drained from their wallet. Alternatively, the link will prompt the recipient to enter the seed phrase, resulting in the same result.

“These scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated. For example, after a contract address and domain are identified as malicious, fraudsters can change the metadata of an NFT to try to avoid being blocked. It can feel like an endless game of -mold”, the blog post said.

The move is part of a broader initiative by Phantom to counter spam NFTs and bad actors in the space. The team stated that it also combats fraudsters through its phishing alert system, which warns users of “any malicious transaction that could compromise their assets or permissions” after clicking on questionable links.

The post added that Phantom is currently working with Blowfish to improve how “we alert users to phishing attempts.”

“While we are introducing NFT Burning today, we are not stopping there. Users can look forward to more automated spam detection in the future. Using providers like SimpleHash and our own internal reporting, we will be able to measure whether an NFT is likely to be spam,” the post said.

Related: Cryptospam Increases 4000% in Two Years — LunarCrush

Phantom is one of the most popular wallet providers for Solana-based NFTs and decentralized fiat (DeFi), with more than 2 million monthly active users according to the firm.

In early August, rival wallet firm Slope suffered a security exploit that drained an estimated $8 million from the Solana blockchain.

In a post-mortem analysis, Solana’s head of communications Austin Fedora found that 60% of the victims of the attack were Phantom users, despite the problem originating from Slope.

Solana hosted the second largest amount of NFT sales volume in July at $56.1 million, behind only Ethereum which posted a whopping $535.6 million according to data from CryptoSlam.