Apparently we need to verify the blockchain now

I genuinely thought checking the contract address was annoying enough. Scammers have apparently decided we needed another step, take a look at what happened 2 days ago. This week somebody created what was effectively a fake GIWA blockchain and managed to get real users to bridge assets into it.

GIWA is a legitimate Ethereum L2 associated with Upbit. People were waiting for its mainnet. So instead of creating another fake website and hoping somebody connected their wallet, the scammers built around that expectation.

They created an EVM network, configured it with GIWA’s legitimate Chain ID 9134 and even provided an RPC. Then there was apparently a fraudulent bridge capable of taking real assets from legitimate infrastructure into the fake environment.

From the perspective of someone arriving early, a surprising amount looked correct. And the single fact that would have destroyed the entire illusion was eventually confirmed by GIWA itself:

Their mainnet hadn’t launched.

DYORSWAP later acknowledged that the network it had treated as GIWA mainnet was fake and said users suffered significant losses through the fraudulent bridge. There have been claims of $2M lost, although I still haven’t seen a complete public forensic accounting that independently proves that exact number.

The exact amount almost feels secondary to me because the method is what scares me. Now somebody has show that sophisticated social engineering can move one layer deeper. A functioning RPC and the correct Chain ID still don’t authenticate a network.

Being early is worth absolutely nothing if the place you arrived early to doesn’t exist.

So yeah. Verify the fucking blockchain too.