Ethereum The Merge coming up in the next few days will be one of the biggest and most important crypto events of the year. So it is easy to see that this is also a money-making opportunity not to be missed for scammers.
The Merge is the official event to move Ethereum from PoW to PoS, but when some parties are against this, there is a very high chance that there will be a hard fork and creation of ETH PoW. That is, whoever holds 1 ETH will also receive 2 ETH, 1 PoS and 1 PoW. It can also be said that this is like money falling from the sky. Therefore, it will stimulate greed and psychology of many people, creating opportunities for scammers to profit.
Here are the top 5 ways scammers can get investors in the loop.
Fake Pool Staking
ETH is transferred to PoS, which means a large amount of ETH will be staked. Currently, the total amount of ETH staking on the Beacon chain only accounts for about 10% of the total circulating ETH, and most of the remaining ETH will be staked after The Merge. From here will appear a lot of new staking pools / Dapps with extremely high yields, to fight greed.
In addition, to be a validator for Ethereum, a minimum of 32 ETH is required, a rather large number for most investors. Scammer can also take advantage of this mentality to create pools like “stake ETH oddly, get high interest”, “collect ETH to stake together”, … Of course once you deposit ETH here, you will no longer have. chance to withdraw.
Things to note:
👉 Learn fully the origin and reputation of pools / Dapp staking.
👉 ETH staking currently has an APR of ~4.5%. After The Merge, it may increase, but 15% is a very high level, if it is higher, be careful.
Scam Airdrop
Currently, there is no official announcement from the Ethereum Foundation indicating that there will be an airdrop. Therefore, all strange tokens that are close to ETH like “ETH2, ETH2.0 coin …” transferred to the wallet after The Merge can be a scam project. Many people will think that just the token is harmless, but as soon as it interacts with the token, the malicious code will "hack" the wallet and transfer all your assets to the scammer wallet.
Things to note:
👉 Do not claim/buy/sell, or interact with any strange tokens sent to the wallet.
Upgrade Scam
With multiple Dapps or websites, it may require you to manipulate/provide a seed phrase to upgrade the network and transfer assets to ETH 2.0 after The Merge. The truth is, The Merge will take place completely transparent and requires nothing from the user. You just need to keep the assets in the wallet and wait.
Things to note:
👉 Do not interact with any Dapp / Website to upgrade Ethereum 2.0, only observe the official announcement from the Ethereum Foundation.
👉 Do not click on any strange links or websites.
Support Scam
After ETH is split into 2, ETH PoS and ETH PoW, most ordinary investors will find many problems and confusion. Because a large number of investors in the crypto market have just joined in recent years, and have no experience with big hard fork events like this.
Scammers can take advantage of this mentality and pretend to be support parties to trick people, for example via twitter as ETH 2.0 support, or through discord channels, Telegram group chat. Pretend to be a representative of reputable CEX exchanges like Binance, FTX to support investors with assets on ETH PoW.
Things to note:
👉 Only interact with official accounts from twitter channels like Ethereum or in the support section of the reputable CEX exchange.
👉 Do not provide seed phrases to anyone, including reputable parties. If reputable, they will never ask for your seed phrases.
Replay Attack
Replay Attack is a special case, allowing bad people to repeat your transaction from ETH PoW to the original PoS. This is a very serious error that many people will easily encounter when selling take profit ETH PoW. Holdstation has a detailed analysis on how to avoid Replay Attack and take profits on all assets on ETH PoW safely, read more here.
Things to note if you want to take profits in ETH PoW:
👉 Transfer ETH to CEX exchanges that support ETH PoW like Binance, Poloniex, ...
👉 If you want to use DEX or when all CEX exchanges have locked ETH deposit/withdrawal, you can follow the instructions in the analysis.
Summary
Overall, ETH PoW will be a "gift" for those holding ETH at this stage. However, keep in mind that most people want to take profits from ETH PoW and there is not a clear demand. Investors should be extremely careful, because for most non-whale investors, the profits from this hard fork are small, so it's not worth risking the entire asset.
