Morpho winds down Discord server to read-only mode DeFi fight scams

The Morpho decentralized lending protocol has announced its Discord channel will change to a “read-only” mode, joining several other DeFi networks that have decided against using the social platform due to scams.

In a short thread published by pseudonymous Morpho Network Discord manager Albist, the protocol announced it would close public channels and turn its servers to read-only after careful consideration, effective February 1.

“To provide you with safer, more reliable support, all official support and contact are consolidated through the Morpho Help Page and its chatbox. For all Morpho-related questions, technical support, and assistance,” the message from Albist read.

Morpho closes Discord due to scams and institutional influence, project developer mulls

Monarch Finance developer Anton Cheng shared a screenshot of the thread on X earlier today, saying he “didn’t see it coming.”

“This could be a trend for other protocols too, scams, bot scraping, or just too much noise might be at play. But maybe its also signals that big DeFi teams are focusing more on institutions and less on communities. Kinda bittersweet to see defi going mainstream,” Cheng wrote, discussing the reasons why Morpho may have chosen to shut its channels down.

Several DeFi community members quoted the post in support of Morpho, with some arguing that crypto activity on most servers has gone lower by the day for the last five years.

“Good idea if your team doesn’t have a use for it. Everyone was forced into discords in 2021/2022, but the reality is that people aren’t living in them the way they did back then. So meet your community where they are instead,” an NFT enthusiast wrote on X.

Discord was mostly used by gamers who created channels to share tips for activities like speedrunning, but as for crypto, discussions are more retail-heavy and promotional.

DeFi platforms are now moving to attract institutional users and business-to-business relationships, so some developers like Cheng believe it is no longer a place to create “communities.”

Discord servers are hunting grounds for cons

Security concerns have clouded the success of crypto project servers, now ridden by scammers impersonating moderators, posting phishing links, or directly messaging users to coerce them into sending their funds.

One of DefiLlama’s dashboard builders, known on X as 0xngmi, said the analytics platform has also been shifting away from Discord. They noted that DefiLlama has made live support chat and email-based ticketing systems its main priority.

“Discord makes it impossible to protect your users from getting scammed. Even if you ban scammers instantly, they still DM users directly to scam them,” they surmised.

When asked why the move away from Discord is happening now, despite scams being prevalent since 2021, the builder resonated the move to operational fatigue.

“Its been a constant battle to keep them in line and at some point its just not worth it esp when we built more a support team since then other support channels have way better tools to make sure nothing is forgotten,” they answered.

Moreover, Morningstar Ventures Head of Growth Petr Martynov said Telegram groups with subtopics have a way smoother UX, and Discord is “too complicated even for many web3 degens.”

“Unfortunately discord servers  of protocols become ghost towns after airdrops/tge rewards are distributed,” he noted.

Last October, government ID photos of about 70,000 global Discord users were exposed after hackers breached a company contracted to perform age verification checks for the online messenger.

Discord gave a statement later after the incident, saying the leaked data may have included users’ names, email addresses, IP addresses, and messages exchanged with customer service.

Zscaler ThreatLabz find malware attacking crypto networks

A November investigation by Zscaler ThreatLabz uncovered malware in three malicious software packages hidden inside the public code library NPM

Zscaler found that attackers created package names that closely resembled trusted tools from the legitimate bitcoinjs project.

In one cited example, a hacker linked to the email address supertalented730@gmail.com and uploaded three packages, including bip40, which was downloaded about 958 times, bitcoin-lib-js with 183 downloads, and 2,286 downloads of bitcoin-main-lib.

“To deceive developers into downloading the fraudulent packages, the attacker used name variations of real repositories found within the legitimate bitcoinjs project,” Zscaler’s researchers noted.

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