Nick

#ethereum

[Ocean Protocol @oceanprotocol]

Cloud computing made developers stop thinking about servers. The next shift makes them stop thinking about GPUs.

@ONcompute started as decentralized compute. It's becoming the layer where you stop renting hardware and start just running models.

Stay tuned 👀

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@Phalcon_xyz @ResolvLabs You got that wrong. That message was not sent by the exploiter, it was sent by someone hoping to copycat the exploiter and failed.

[Santisa @Tiza4ThePeople]

It's insane to me that some of the richest people in the space are those whose projects failed, token went to $0, but somehow the majority of the project's treasury ended up in their wallets.

12 MAU, $15M market cap, $100M exfiltrated by the team. We need to do better.

[Hasu⚡️🤖 @hasufl]

Don't know what this is in reference to specifically, but if its a general vibe, consider that the incentives in crypto are very different. Founders who fail in other industries don't get rich in the process.

Only in crypto are some of the richest folks around repeated failed founders. Your networth is better predicted by how many projects you started (and abandoned) then actually made successful - let alone generated value for other people.

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@FTC That's good, due to reasons further outlined here:
https://t.co/h03VPBlVsL

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

Very interesting find!

Re: “why bother pursuing a closed project?”
That might actually be crucial for people who still haven’t been able to recover their share of the returned assets. Especially users with Nomad assets on Evmos haven’t been able to recover since the beginning of 2024. That’s when the recovery relayer stopped working (probably just due to a dead RPC that was never updated on Nomad’s infra). There’s still roughly $3M sitting in the recovery contract waiting to be claimed: https://t.co/E8CYizTMqe

@nomadxyz_ is not reacting to any of the user complaints, which can only be made via the Discord channel. The "mods" in there say that they will relay to the actual team, but they also don't hear back. In the past I tried to get in contact with the founders, however without success. I only got a short response from @pranaymohan (former CEO) who said he is not with Nomad anymore and got dropped a few mails of people who should still work there. Got zero responds from those mails. Couldn't get a reaction from any of the other founders @_prestwich (CTO) @barbaraliau (COO)

The only thing that might've led to at least some action for the benefit of affected users - who had been complaining in Discord for months - was after I posted this tweet (https://t.co/BEzMGrOBDX) and tagged everyone I could find who had been involved with Nomad. Shortly after, they at least updated the whitelist (the most time-sensitive issue I pointed out), so some wallets were able to recover their tokens from Milkomeda before the shutdown.

Good opportunity to use the same tag list again that might've worked last time:

@pranaymohan (Founder, CEO during hack)
@_prestwich (Founder, CTO during hack)
@barbaraliau (Founder, COO)
@RoboMcGobo (Community Admin Lead)
@annascarroll (former Protocol lead, part of whitelist managing multisig)
@julrach (Head of growth)
@LukeTchang (Protocol Engineer)
@arnaud036 (DevOps engineer)
@ErinHales1 (Engineer)
@YourBuddyConner
@imtimaj

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

Very interesting find!

Re: “why bother pursuing a closed project?”
That might actually be crucial for people who still haven’t been able to recover their share of the returned assets. Especially users with Nomad assets on Evmos haven’t been able to recover since the beginning of 2024. That’s when the recovery relayer stopped working (probably just due to a dead RPC that was never updated on Nomad’s infra). There’s still roughly $3M sitting in the recovery contract waiting to be claimed: https://t.co/E8CYizTMqe

@nomadxyz_ is not reacting to any of the user complaints, which can only be made via the Discord channel. The "mods" in there say that they will relay to the actual team, but they also don't hear back. In the past I tried to get in contact with the founders, however without success. I only got a short response from @pranaymohan (former CEO) who said he is not with Nomad anymore and got dropped a few mails of people who should still work there. Got zero responds from those mails. Couldn't get a reaction from any of the other founders @_prestwich (CTO) @barbaraliau (COO)

The only thing that might've led to at least some action for the benefit of affected users - who had been complaining in Discord for months - was after I posted this tweet (https://t.co/BEzMGrOBDX) and tagged everyone I could find who had been involved with Nomad. Shortly after, they at least updated the whitelist (the most time-sensitive issue I pointed out), so some wallets were able to recover their tokens from Milkomeda before the shutdown.

Good opportunity to use the same tag list again that might've worked last time:

@pranaymohan (Founder, CEO during hack)
@_prestwich (Founder, CTO during hack)
@barbaraliau (Founder, COO)
@RoboMcGobo (Community Admin Lead)
@annascarroll (former Protocol lead, part of whitelist managing multisig)
@julrach (Head of growth)
@LukeTchang (Protocol Engineer)
@arnaud036 (DevOps engineer)
@ErinHales1 (Engineer)
@YourBuddyConner
@imtimaj

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@nomadxyz_ was hacked roughly 3 years ago. A portion of the assets was recovered. To access their pro-rata share, users had to go through Coinlists KYC verification and then get whitelisted by a 2/5 msig from the Nomad Team [1] to use the recovery bridge.

This whitelist has not been updated in nearly a year. Since last year damaged users have been complaining about not being added to the whitelist after passing KYC. The last official documentation says it would take up to 48h after KYC was passed to be added. [2]

While it’s fair to trickle down the frequency of whitelist updates after some time, a year without updating the allowlist is simply too long. Especially since the Nomad team has been alerted for months that Milkomeda will be shut down by September 1, 2025. [3] According to complaints in the Nomad Discord (which is the official Nomad support) there are several users that are affected by this and are at immediate risk of losing access to their recovery claim from Milkomeda.

Roughly 3M USD worth of recovery claims is still waiting to be accessed. Potentially even an additional of 1.15M USD that was likely reserved for Whitehat bounties that were not claimed. This still sits in the Nomad “Staging wallet” utilized solely for recovery operations. [4]

Reasons to not have claimed the recovery share right away can be manifold, a few reasons others told me were: tax implications on potential future recoveries that needed to be discussed with tax authorities first, forgotten madAssets found a bit hidden in DeFi farms during accounting or simply generally not having felt any sort of rush since it was stated from Discord mods that there is no deadline.

Aside from me, several others tried getting into contact with the persons overseeing the recovery process, but to my knowledge also failed to get in touch. Here is what I’ve personally tried so far:

Many months ago, I reached out to @RoboMcGobo (Nomad Discord Admin) via X and Discord. I reached out many times, but he did not respond to me unfortunately. I had my hopes high, since even though he did not post anything in the Discord for a long time, in May he posted that they (Illusory Systems Inc.) had been contacted by a third party that was interested in buying USDC claims from Nomad victims, because they potentially found the identity of one of the hackers. A few days later he deleted this and then acknowledged the current problems with the Nomad Bridge. A bit after that, he communicated that the problems were solved (even though, they were only for Milkomeda and Moonbeam, not Evmos and only solved for people that were able to recover by not using the official FE).

Over a month ago I reached out to @pranaymohan (Founder, former CEO) and Barbara (Founder, COO) via X. No response from Barbara. Pranay only responded that he is no longer with Illusory Systems Inc. (Nomad parent company) and gave me the contact details of Barbara and Kim who according to him should still oversee the recovery process. He does not seem to care any further unfortunately, which is quite disappointing to see from a founder and CEO during the hack. I reached out to the contact info that he shared with me, but no response there either.

I also did not get any response from [email protected] which is cited in the terms and conditions of the recovery bridge site.

A week ago I reached out to @annascarroll (former Protocol lead, part of whitelist managing multisig) via X, also without response unfortunately.

I see no other option than to try the public route on X in hope that there is anyone from the former Nomad team that feels a certain moral obligation to damaged users of the bridge and even if they don’t have any role themselves anymore, will try to reach out and appeal to their former team members overseeing the recovery process.

Since some of you might remember or are able to find out, it could also help if we could find out for certain who is on the Multisig that manages the whitelist. [1]
In that regard, the following could be derived from onchain and/or Nomad blog posts/documentation information:
Signatories:
0xe87f297353d27c8c771d79ae2994a031bd8a7b5b
- Likely: brandonf.eth @BrandonFerrick

0xA0d0c4A19A1247AFA805F485e4513E16b3744739
- Unknown, must be Founder (Pranay, Barbara, James) according to Blog post about Staging Wallet Multi-Sig

0x8B37E96C0851844ea4924363B8d795f49374B114
- Unknown, empty. Must be Founder (Pranay, Barbara, James) according to Blog post about Staging Wallet Multi-Sig

0x8C1E4aA678E74fF9D2583aE4ea56f9b0bC720D44
- Safe “with other members of the Nomad Core Team” according to blog post
- Potential identified contact possibility:
0x25270d2e6980C5b343C4866Aea904a9A9bCA733F linked on Etherscan to @annascarroll

0x034f6d6bF2bDcf4746BF1C37a3394e9CdAC59Ba3
- Unknown

Aside from the most urgent whitelist issue, there are further problems with the recovery process. In the case of recoveries from Milkomeda and Moonbeam, those are “only” frontend issues that can be surpassed with a certain technical know-how. Recoveries from Evmos are strictly not possible anymore since early 2024, likely due to the bridge Updater (1 centralized entity, but unknown to me who runs it) using an outdated RPC. I don’t want to get into details here to keep focus on the most pressing issue for damaged Milkomeda users for now.

(Former) team members I could find on X. If you know anything, could retweet or are willing to step in and help figure this out would be very much appreciated!

@pranaymohan (Founder, CEO during hack)
@_prestwich (Founder, CTO during hack)
@barbaraliau (Founder, COO)
@RoboMcGobo (Community Admin Lead)
@annascarroll (former Protocol lead, part of whitelist managing multisig)
@julrach (Head of growth)
@LukeTchang (Protocol Engineer)
@arnaud036 (DevOps engineer)
@ErinHales1 (Engineer)
@YourBuddyConner
@imtimaj
Happy to have other prior team members be added if anyone knows of any!

References:
[1]: https://t.co/6N1SdCAIYo
[2]: https://t.co/j8BlGTSCwo
[3]: https://t.co/mIlFQKJdBe
[4]: https://t.co/xcGOvB4Qbz

[PaperImperium @ImperiumPaper]

First FTC action I’ve seen in a while in crypto. Also curious why bother pursuing an action against a functionally closed project (Nomad).

Link: https://t.co/ASF8BN7r1j

Proposed consent order: https://t.co/g5Qm99E8Wx

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

I think the vast majority of on-chain activity is not willing to pay such high fees for wallet features. However, the few users who are willing to do so are paying a substantial fee.

DeFiLlama actually has a good dashboard for this.

To keep the timeframe consistent, I used the earliest available date: September 25, 2024.

• Base Chain revenue: $100M
• Base (Wallet/App) revenue: $120M

Important to note though, that Base App not only produced this revenue on Base Chain, since those features are also offered on other chains. Probably possible to create a Dune Query to get the actual data, if there is not already an existing one.

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@ImperiumPaper @Optimism @okutrade Wouldn't say it's chain monetization. It's monetization of the wallet for the swap feature within the wallet, like Metamask offers it as well on multiple chains

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@TrustlessState @haydenzadams @jaosef The dashboard in general is still a work in progress, but the price chart and ETH bid amount above clearing price are already in there: https://t.co/oRsPMF2POK

I'll add other interesting stuff such as how much which participant staked soon

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@TrustlessState @haydenzadams They will be returned to the Foundation. Or already have been https://t.co/otX80BADzo

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@haydenzadams @TrustlessState Actually, around 54M tokens remained unsold. During the first 7200 blocks of clearing (Contributor Day) the demand was still a bit lower. The clearing price only surpassed the floor price a few hours before the public clearing phase started (during the 12h pause window).

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@TrustlessState @haydenzadams @jaosef Among else I'll put that up on Dune in a few hours. Have most of my new dashboard done, but wanted to have a proper look after working out before sending

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@haydenzadams I like this auction style a lot.

And actually even ended 63% above the floor price, the Aztec Sales Dashboard lagged a bit in the last hours

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@Rexa302 @thattallguy @aztecnetwork @jaosef @KaitoAI You already agreed, but still wanted to note that the other projects you referenced didn't actually "raise" the amount that was bid but a lot less.

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

I think the “arbitrarily parametrizable curve” bit is a small nuance that might trip some people up here.

Your “100 ETH, 100 blocks left → 1 ETH per block” mental model is perfect for a flat release schedule (same amount of tokens auctioned each block). But in Aztec’s parameterization, bids are actually spread across the remaining supply, not equally across time. For contributors who pre-bid, that roughly means ~25% of their ETH ends up on day-1 blocks, ~5% on day-2 blocks, and so on.

That was what confused me at first looking at the Aztec sale UI. I initially thought my ETH would drip evenly over time while AZTEC sold per day varied. In reality, your spend is shaped by the same curve that controls how many tokens are released.

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@haydenzadams @jillgun @0xdavid @ericzhong @jgcfyi Agreed. I like a lot actually

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

> Way less demand this first day as it's before the public comes in

I surely believe this will become true; still interesting to see that right now even though the public track makes up for roughly 25% of soulband pass holders, it's only contributors that already started bidding. (I'm pretty convinced though in general we'll see a very noticeable uptick closer to the clearing window, similar to the uptick in megaETHs sale at the end).

https://t.co/4b1A4j9wtz

[Nick @0x_Nick_]

@jillgun @0xdavid @ericzhong @jgcfyi Every bid is always going to be spread over the remaining time of the auction