An expert Ethereum programmer made about 3 million reais in ApeCoin by making a flash loan (instant loan, in literal translation). At the time, the user “borrowed” NFTs from the Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC), and returned immediately after receiving the airdrop.
In the first such operation, the experienced programmer wrote a smart contract that flashed all NFTX tokens to exchange the NFTs available on the platform, receive the APE coins from the airdrop and then send the NFTs back to the platform.
Without analyzing the details, the operation seems simple. You buy/borrow the tokens, exchange them for the NFT, send the NFT to receive the airdrop and then return the NFT to the pool, as well as the borrowed tokens.
The best part, of course, is that none of this happens with human eyes. After all, the tokens or the NFT have not been moved.
This is a code operation, where the Ethereum network verifies everything, completes all these transactions in one block and then achieves the ultimate goal – receiving the ApeCoin airdrop.
All the steps can be seen in the image above, including the ‘Null Address’ magic that does the whole process of converting the token to NFT and then receives about 60,000 ApeCoins, worth more than 3 million reais.
The contract doesn’t look that simple, though, even though it’s only 330 lines of code. After all, the code is so compressed that reading it is extremely difficult.
The fee paid for this process was only 0.23 ETH which is equivalent to R$3,300. Yes, this was the full amount the user spent to pay the flash loan, borrow the NFT, convert and re-convert and receive the airdrop. Thus, the programmer’s small investment had a return of 1,000 times.
Anyone could have done this, but it is necessary to have a lot of experience in making a flash loan, this is one of the greatest inventions in the cryptocurrency sector in recent years.
Source: Live Coins
John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.