The Twitter account belonging to Vitalik Buterin, inventor and effective leader of the Ethereum project, was hacked to promote a crypto scam. A tweet posted to his compromised account advertised a “commemorative NFT” to celebrate the impending release of “proto-danksharding”, which is the actual name for an upcoming change to the Ethereum protocol.However, the link was a scam, and anyone who connected their wallet risked having their wallet drained of its cryptocurrency and NFTs. Some blue-chip NFTs were stolen, including two CryptoPunks (a collection with a floor price of around 47 ETH, or $76,800). Altogether, stolen assets surpassed $650,000 in value within a few hours of the theft according to zachxbt, though this counts notoriously difficult-to-value NFTs.The tweet was taken down within twenty minutes of being posted. All in all, posting a link to a wallet drainer was probably among the least effective things the attacker could do with the Twitter account of a person whose word can dramatically move markets.It did seem to be something of a stark warning to some in the crypto world, however, who expressed sentiments along the lines of “if Vitalik can get hacked, anyone can.”

Total loss estimated at $691,000.