Ripple CTO Warns of Fraudulent Flare Support Accounts

David Schwartz jokingly remarked that the emergence of impersonation scammers targeting the Flare team is a major milestone for the network.

David Schwartz, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Cryptographer at Ripple, recently drew public attention to the emergence of impersonation scammers targeting the Flare network support team following the token distribution event (TDE). The warning, which was made lightheartedly, comes a few hours after Schwartz berated the Flare team for their token distribution policies.

“Congratulations to the Flare network on just hitting a major milestone,” Schwartz jokingly remarked, sharing a screenshot of a fraudulent Flare support Twitter handle that he had just blocked. Schwartz’s comments, while evidently sarcastic, underscore the magnitude of scams and bots on Crypto Twitter, so much so that being impersonated feels like an initiation rite to the space.

Congratulations to the Flare network on just hitting a major milestone. pic.twitter.com/Ud12oaeH1H

— David "JoelKatz" Schwartz (@JoelKatz) January 12, 2023

While Schwartz believed the highlighted account was their first support impersonation scammer, another user noted that they’ve had tons of others in the past. Some XRP proponents also disclosed that they have been contacted by a few of the fraudulent accounts regarding the FLR token airdrop.

Schwartz’s comments came shortly after the California-based engineer called out the Flare team for their token distribution policies which provide no incentives for FLR holders to retain their tokens after receiving them.

However, he recently revealed that he received the airdrop and has also purchased some FLR tokens. Schwartz, however, noted that he believes some people who don’t want to deal with the project are irrationally selling off their airdropped tokens. The asset has dipped by over 70% from its peak of $0.15, currently trading at $0.04228.

The Prevalence of Scams on Crypto Twitter 

Notwithstanding the lighthearted tone of Schwartz’s latest comments, users ought to be vigilant when interacting with any supported account on Twitter, whether it is verified or not. 

Last August, Serpent, a pseudonymous web3 security analyst, highlighted eight different avenues through which scammers target unsuspecting users on Crypto Twitter, including honeypot accounts, hacked verified accounts and Unicode letters, among others.

In September of last year, Dogecoin co-founder Bill Markus echoed the frustration of the crypto community on Twitter over the growing rate of impersonation scams targeting Binance Chief CZ. While these scams and bots have reduced since Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, they have not been completely eliminated and users are advised to tread carefully.