A New Coin On The Crypto Block

Market Meditations | October 14, 2022

A new token on the crypto block is making waves by contributing to the recent increase in Ethereum network traffic. The free-to-mint crypto only requires that you have an Ethereum wallet and cover the gas fees.

  • Xen is an experimental token on the Ethereum network available for free mint. It hopes to take advantage of Metcalfe’s law, increasing in value as users increase.
  • The minting difficulty is time adjusted. Xen has no ICO, no admin keys, and no team members able to pre-mint the token.
  • Anyone with an Ethereum wallet can claim their place in line to mint Xen tokens. This allows some users to take advantage of minting from multiple wallets and claim mints every day by simply covering the gas/transaction fees to do so.
  • This free minting feature is how one user took advantage of FTX’s subsidized transaction fees to mint $70,000 worth of XEN, leaving FTX with more than a $100,000 bill in transaction fees.
  • Instead of withdrawing funds to a normal wallet address, the user is said to have withdrawn the funds to a smart contract function. This contract allowed the user to loop the minting process and send the Xen to the user’s wallet address.

The user who tricked FTX into paying their gas fees to mint XEN theoretically pulled $70,000 out of thin air. Whilst this was an interesting exploit, for avoidance of doubt we neither own Xen tokens nor have an interest in buying any of them.