Solana Wallet Introduces ‘Burn NFTs’ to Protect Investors From Scams

The Phantom wallet app has introduced a new Burn Token feature, enabling users to remove spam NFTs sent by scammers.

Phantom Wallet Adds ‘Burn NFTs’ Feature

Phantom, a wallet provider based in Solana, has added a new feature that allows users to burn spam nonfungible tokens (NFTs) sent by scammers.

According to a blog post published by the Phantom team on Thursday, the feature is accessible via the Burn Token tab in the Phantom wallet app, enabling users to receive a minuscule Solana (SOL) deposit each time it is used:

“We’re still in the Wild West days of Web3. As the crypto ecosystem grows, so have the number of bad actors looking for ways to steal user’s funds. The rapid growth in popularity of NFTs has led to an increasingly prevalent method of attack for scammers – Spam NFTs.”

Phantom stated that the issue has been especially prevalent on Solana owing to its low transaction fees, with bad actors frequently airdropping supposedly free NFTs in large numbers containing malicious links.

Spam NFT generally instructs the receiver to click a link to generate a free NFT. However, if they finish the process, their funds are drained from their wallet. Alternately, the link will prompt the receiver to enter their seed phrase, leading to the same result.

“These scams are becoming increasingly more sophisticated. For instance, after a contract address and domain are identified as malicious, scammers can change the metadata of an NFT to try to avoid being blocklisted. It can feel like an endless game of whack-a-mole,” the blog post read.

A Collaboration to Enhance Phishing Alerts

Phantom’s move is part of a larger effort to combat spam NFTs and bad actors in the space. The team stated that it also combats scammers with its phishing warning system, which alerts users about “any malicious transactions that could compromise their assets or permissions” after they click on suspicious links. The post also emphasized Phantom’s collaboration with Blowfish to improve alerting users on phishing attempts. 

The post read, “While we’re introducing NFT Burning today, we’re not stopping there. Users can look forward to more automated spam detection in the future. Using providers like SimpleHash and our own internal reporting, we will be able to gauge if an NFT is likely to be spam.”

According to the firm, Phantom serves as one of the most prominent wallet providers for Solana-based NFTs and decentralized fiance (DeFi), with over 2 million monthly active users.

At the beginning of August, competing wallet firm Slope experienced a security exploit that resulted in an estimated $8 million worth of funds being drained from the Solana blockchain.

Despite the fact that the issue originated with Slope, Solana’s head of communications, Austin Fedora, uncovered in a post-mortem analysis that 60% of the victims of the exploit were Phantom users.

According to CryptoSlam data, Solana hosted the second highest amount of NFT sales volume in July, with $56.1 million, trailing only Ethereum, which had a staggering $535.6 million.