How This Whale Lost 100 ETH Through An ENS Domain Name

BitcoinistPublished on 2022-07-22Last updated on 2022-07-22

Abstract

An ETH whale has incurred a massive loss on account of participating in a meme trend that has been gaining...

An ETH whale has incurred a massive loss on account of participating in a meme trend that has been gaining traction on Twitter. The meme trend was in direct connection to the ENS domain names and their growing popularity in the NFT space. Some domain names have been receiving high bids lately, and users in the space have called out the fact that these bids were being placed by the owners of the domain names themselves, leading to this unfortunate situation.
Pumping Up The Price
Following the popularity of the joke that owners were placing high bids on their own domain names using alt accounts, a Twitter user known as @franklinisbored decided to test the ENS bid bot on Twitter which posts about high bids. Franklin is a known Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) whale, holding multiple NFTs from the collection. Hence the reason he was able to make such a gamble on the ENS name.
He first tweeted asking his more than 110k followers what ENS domain name he should buy. Franklin eventually settled on the “stop-doing-fake-bids-its-honestly-lame-my-guy.eth domain name. After this, he listed the domain name for sale and proceeded to use his other account to place a 100 WETH bid on the domain name.
Not too long after, as the ‘joke’ gained traction, Franklin had then received a 1.9 ETH bid on the domain name, which he had accepted. One thing that Franklin had forgotten to do, though, removed the 100 WETH bid he had placed as a joke earlier. As soon as the buyer had received the ENS, they promptly accepted Franklin’s 100 WETH bid and received 97.5 WETH after fees.

Ethereum price chart from TradingView.com


ETH price drops to $1,500 | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com
Asking For The ETH Back
After selling the ENS domain name for 1.9 ETH, the BAYC whale proceeded to post a celebratory tweet saying it was “the most surprising 1.891 ETH I have ever made.” However, not much later, Franklin quickly realized his mistake when he saw the 100 WETH go through. At this point, the celebration quickly turned sour.
Taking to Twitter once more, Franklin explained his mistake, calling it the “joke and bag fumble of the century.” He explained that this was not a bot sale in any way; rather, it was his fault for not canceling even though he had ample time to do so.
He proceeded to send the 1.9 WETH back to the buyer of the ENS address, in hopes of the person returning his 100 WETH to him. However, he also accepted that there is little to no chance of him getting his money back.
At the time of this writing, Franklin is yet to update his followers on if the buyer/flipper had sent back his ETH to him.

Related Reads

DeFi Has Reached Its Most Dangerous Moment: The Real Vulnerabilities Are Not in the Code

DeFi in Peril: The Real Vulnerability Isn't in the Code April 2026 marked a paradigm shift in DeFi security, with over $625 million lost across 30 incidents—the worst month in crypto history by event count. Crucially, none of the major exploits (Drift Protocol: $285M, KelpDAO: $292M, Wasabi Protocol: $4.5M) resulted from smart contract vulnerabilities. Instead, failures occurred in the operational "plumbing": social engineering to compromise multi-signature councils, a single-point-of-failure 1-of-1 bridge validator, and stolen admin private keys. These events expose a fundamental misalignment: the industry's security model has long focused on code audits, while the actual attack surface has shifted to privileged access points and off-chain infrastructure. The article introduces the term "OpenFi" to describe this reality: permissionless, on-chain, yet operationally dependent on trusted third parties (admins, validators, oracles) at key junctures. The KelpDAO exploit vividly demonstrated asymmetric "contagion risk." A configuration error in a smaller protocol triggered a panic, causing approximately $13.2 billion in outflows from larger, unaffected protocols like Aave within 48 hours, as users fled uncertain collateral. The core dilemma is the double-edged sword of centralization. Operational levers like emergency councils (e.g., Arbitrum freezing stolen funds post-KelpDAO) enable crisis response but also create catastrophic attack surfaces if compromised (e.g., Drift). The path forward demands radical honesty: protocols must clearly disclose their trust assumptions, operational levers, and failure modes. The industry must treat operational security (key management, configurations, incident response) with the same rigor as code security. Survival depends on building systems whose risks can be understood, priced, and insured, moving beyond the outdated "code is law" mantra to a mature model of disclosed and managed trust.

链捕手38m ago

DeFi Has Reached Its Most Dangerous Moment: The Real Vulnerabilities Are Not in the Code

链捕手38m ago

Vitalik's Article Emphasizes Ethereum Must Be 'Amazing', But Foundation Is Not the Center

Vitalik Buterin has published a lengthy response to recent community criticism directed at the Ethereum Foundation (EF). Acknowledging a sense of "unease," he addresses concerns about the EF's strategic direction, its perceived disconnect from ETH's price performance, and calls for its reduced central role. Vitalik rejects the notion that the EF should be the central governing body of Ethereum, framing it instead as one "node with a clear mandate" among many within the ecosystem. He highlights the EF's limited ETH holdings (≈0.16% of supply) compared to other blockchain foundations and states it will no longer sell significant amounts of ETH. Its future focus will be on long-term, critical projects that align with Ethereum's core values of censorship-resistance and decentralization, which might not otherwise happen. A core argument is that Ethereum must be "amazing," but not by merely chasing higher transaction speeds at the cost of decentralization. He proposes focusing on the "CROPS" dimensions: creating a Cryptographically provable, Reliable, Open, Private, and Secure network. This includes pursuing goals like a formally verifiable, bug-free Ethereum client and minimizing protocol-level reliance on intermediaries. The article concludes by noting that while Vitalik clarifies the EF's refocused role, he does not directly address community suggestions for creating a new organization explicitly aligned with ETH's economic interests. This "alignment gap" is presented as a key challenge for Ethereum's future.

链捕手49m ago

Vitalik's Article Emphasizes Ethereum Must Be 'Amazing', But Foundation Is Not the Center

链捕手49m ago

Galxe: How a Quest Platform Evolved into Web3's Growth Infrastructure

Galxe, once perceived as a simple Web3 quest platform, has evolved into a core growth infrastructure within the Web3 ecosystem. It addresses a fundamental Web3 growth dilemma: the lack of a mature, systematic user acquisition and retention system akin to Web2's advertising and analytics platforms. While users complete quests (social tasks, on-chain interactions) for rewards, Galxe's true innovation lies in transforming these fragmented, one-off actions into lasting, verifiable identity credentials. This process of *behavioral assetization* creates a persistent record of a user's activities across projects and chains. For users, their wallet accumulates a valuable history that can unlock future access and rewards, fostering a "profile-building" mentality. For projects, Galxe provides a pre-screened user pool with rich behavioral data, enabling targeted outreach to users based on their specific on-chain history and community engagement. Galxe employs a gamefied growth path, guiding users from low-friction social tasks into deeper, valuable on-chain interactions through a structured progression of quests. This solves the incentive-behavior mismatch common in Web3, filtering users by their willingness to engage. Beyond quests, products like Passport (identity verification) and Starboard (community analytics) position Galxe as a comprehensive growth operating system. The platform's defensible advantage is its self-reinforcing data and network flywheel: more projects attract more users, enriching behavioral data; richer data enables better user targeting, attracting more projects. Ultimately, Galxe is shifting Web3's growth logic from short-term "reward-driven" traffic towards a long-term "identity-driven" relationship model, where a user's accumulated on-chain履历 becomes a core asset.

marsbit55m ago

Galxe: How a Quest Platform Evolved into Web3's Growth Infrastructure

marsbit55m ago

Trading

Spot
Futures

Hot Articles

Discussions

Welcome to the HTX Community. Here, you can stay informed about the latest platform developments and gain access to professional market insights. Users' opinions on the price of ETH (ETH) are presented below.

活动图片