All My Apes Gone — So Too Your Dreams of Blockchain Revolution

Summary

The Bored Ape Yacht Club's (BAYC) recent security breach underscores the vulnerability of blockchain technology to traditional hacking methods, challenging the notion of inherent security in the digital art and cryptocurrency space.

Abstract

The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), a prominent NFT creator, experienced a hack where millions of dollars' worth of NFTs and cryptocurrency were stolen through their Instagram account and Discord server. This incident highlights the fallibility of blockchain technology, which, despite its promise of secure transactions, is susceptible to exploitation due to human error. The hackers used a phishing scam, tricking users into granting access to their digital wallets. The theft, totaling around $13.4 million, emphasizes the gap between the utopian vision of blockchain as a secure haven for digital assets and the reality of its implementation. The article argues that technology is only as secure as its users and that true revolutionary change requires altering social and economic structures, not just technological advancements. It suggests that blockchain's potential is undermined by its current applications, such as the creation and trade of NFTs, which are criticized for their environmental impact and contribution to financial waste.

Opinions

The security of blockchain technology is compromised by the human factor, as technology can only be as secure as the people using it.
The promise of NFTs offering enhanced security over physical art is undermined by the reality that hackers can exploit traditional weaknesses to access digital wallets.
The BAYC hack demonstrates that the blockchain's inherent security does not prevent unauthorized transactions initiated by deceived users.
The article posits that the concept of a 'human factor' is not an immutable law but a product of historical conditioning, suggesting that human nature can evolve with changing social and economic structures.
It is argued that technological advancements alone, such as blockchain, cannot spark a revolution without a corresponding transformation in social relations.
The current use of blockchain technology, particularly in the mass production of NFTs, is seen as environmentally damaging and a perpetuation of waste and exploitation.
The article cautions against the blind pursuit of technological innovation without considering its broader implications on society and the environment.
It is suggested that revolutions are not driven by specific technologies or policies but by fundamental shifts in social and economic organization.
The potential revolutionary impact of blockchain technology is questioned, as it may simply perpetuate existing power structures without significant changes in how the world is organized.

All My Apes Gone — So Too Your Dreams of Blockchain Revolution

It’s always the human factor. It’s a tiny thing, an ‘immutable’ force destroying utopian dreams. Whenever we are told about revolutionary technology, where security is built into the tech itself, the ‘human factor’ comes along and teaches us the same ol’ lesson: Technology can only be as secure as the people using it.

Here’s a new entry. Earlier this week, hackers forced their way into the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s (BAYC) Instagram account and Discord Server to steal millions of dollars’ worth of NFTs and cryptocurrency.

NFTs, which are non-fungible, were designed to make collecting art possible in the digital world. It quickly devolved into a frenzy of mass-produced PNGs that created a billion-dollar bubble. The Bored Ape Yacht Club is perhaps the most famous minter of NFTs, creating a series of ready-made images depicting chimps, which are often used as digital avatars on Twitter and sell for millions of dollars.

As with most things in the land of cryptocurrency, one (as of yet unfulfilled) promise with NFTs is that they offer inherent security — above and beyond that of physical art. This is because, as crypto enthusiasts argue, transactions on the blockchain cannot be faked.

This much is true. But that does not mean that hackers cannot exploit the same weaknesses — ones that they have been using for decades now! — to force users to make a transaction on the blockchain without their consent. And that is exactly what they did with BAYC’s Instagram account.

After they got in, hackers posted a link, claiming it would give access to a mint for BAYC’s upcoming metaverse project OthersideMeta. The mint link was said to allow users to purchase digital land rights inside the universe. Instead, the link allowed hackers to gain direct access to the target’s digital wallet. An estimated 54 NFTs were stolen, totaling around $13.4 million lost.

Due to the nature of the blockchain, and the lack of regulations within the industry, users will not be able to get their money back. So much for revolutionary technology.

But the problem with revolutionary technology has nothing to do with human nature. The human factor is simply a more contextualized version of something obvious: The weakest link in the chain defines the strength of the chain itself. In this case, the weakest link is the end-user.

Often enough, when people refer to a ‘human factor,’ they are referring to some immutable law of human nature. But human nature is not unchangeable. It is a product of historical forces. We are who we are because we have been conditioned to be this way by social and economic structures that are continuously evolving.

True revolution can only happen by changing the nature of the social relations that define how our society functions.

Unleashing technological change on its own, in the hopes that it will have revolutionary impact, ignores the role of historical forces. Blockchain technology could have a million brilliant uses, but if it only adds to continuing cycles of waste and exploitation, it can only serve to have a counter-revolutionary influence.

New tech is not worthless due to some essential nature. It is worthless because 21st-century human beings will use it exactly as they might be expected to use it: In this case, we use it to mass-produce cheap PNGs of apes, in the process destroying the Earth by using the same amount of electricity as a small country, and by wasting billions of dollars that could have gone elsewhere.

As a cautionary tale, NFTs can show us much about the nature of revolutionary energy. How we lie to ourselves about participating in something that is going to change the world — usually for our own benefit.

But revolutions cannot be predicated on specific innovations, whether they come in the form of new technologies or policy changes. Revolutionary change can only happen on the historical level: Fundamental shifts in the way social and economic relations organize themselves.

And while minor shifts in the technological or political landscape can help initiate that change, we ought to be wary about where those changes might lead us if they remain undirected by careful thought and consideration.

Indeed, new technology helped jumpstart the Industrial Revolution, which led to the creation of modern capitalism, but this revolution was nothing more than the reconfiguration of feudal notions of ownership, now applied to factory production.

The same problems obviously apply to any ‘revolution’ that could possibly be brought about by the blockchain. If there’s no dynamic change in how we organize the world, then won’t it merely be more of the same?