During the early hours of Thursday, it seemed as though DeFi protocol Near's X account — that has over 1.8 million followers — was hacked. The handle's username and profile picture was changed. That was followed by a series of controversial posts. So, was that indeed hacked or is there a twist to the tale?
Smoke and mirrors
The Near team posted a message on X saying that the official handle of the protocol was hijacked, and the so-called hacker posted a series of posts criticizing the crypto ecosystem. However, there were no attempts to phish the NEAR community via malicious links, contract addresses, or otherwise.
It was later brought to light by spokespersons that the account did not fall victim to any hack. It was just a marketing stunt, intended to grab attention to promote the project’s upcoming hackathon — that would reward up to $500k in prizes — that is set to kick off from today.
Defaming the crypto industry and calling it a scam got community members furious. They labeled the drill to be a “psyop guerrilla marketing campaign.” They argued that pushing out such a tweet might have worked to instill short-term hype and engagement, but ended up damaging the long-term reputation and credibility of Near.
Hacks are quite common within the crypto space, and every other day stories about how big accounts are compromised to shill newly created coins keep floating around. Hack-instigated fund siphoning is a real issue and stalwarts keep educating users on a daily basis about how to stay safe and trust only reliable sources.
This exhibit is like the story of John fake crying for help pretending to be attacked by a wolf to attract the villagers’ attention, and then, when the wolf really appeared one fine day, nobody turned up to help him.
People’s trust with respect to Near is eroding. “What a bunch of clowns," "such a sh*tshow," "fake cringefest," "not worth it” - are just a few phrases that express the community’s frustration.
[H]actually a masterstroke?
But again, who are we to moral police? Mind you, it is the crypto space that we are talking about. Things don't always make rational sense here.
Firms like Polkadot have been pouring in thousands of dollars to make their animated logo stand out amongst the static logos of its peers. This cycle, investors poured funds into a coin just because a hat-wearing dog looked cute. Several early investors ended up making generational wealth.
People on this side of the spectrum view Near’s stunt as a pretty novel and refreshing marketing style. A user said, “I dig it & it worked. Everyone was talking about it.”
Cross-referencing and elaborating on why it doesn't make sense to tow the corporate line anymore, the user added,
“Consider MakerDAO, many consider them [a] reputable business doing the polar opposite, rebranding as Sky in the safest way possible, instantly panned, disliked, & forgotten. I think the “safe” corpo[rate] thing that lawyers & risk folks are advocating just isn’t cutting it & doesn’t seem like people consider it cypher punk enough. It’s too corporate.”
They say, “When life gives you hacks, make sure they’re ethical.” Gimmicking a hack wasn’t probably the right thing to do, but users appreciated Near for “normalizing” sh*t-posting without creating the illusion.
There was a time when the “announcement of an announcement” used to be the go-to marketing strategy to keep users on their toes and make them speculate things. However now, it seems like Near has found its non-mainstream marketing edge that will perhaps be studied going forward.
At the end of the day, publicity is publicity. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?
