Scam Alert: No, Vitalik Buterin Isn't Inviting You to Vote for Ethereum (ETH) Fork

Today, Sept. 5, 2022, many Ethereum ($ETH) enthusiasts as well as average holders of Ether and ERC-20 tokens registered a "dust attack" on their wallets. While this method of raising awareness is typical for scam "airdrops," high-risk schemes and other similar ventures, today's attack is a special one.

No, Vitalik Buterin does not distribute governance tokens

According to statements by various Crypto Twitter users, today, at around 7:00 a.m. (UTC), someone started to spreading a mysterious ERC-20 token. While checking suspicious transactions on Etherscan explorer, people revealed that they received this token from the wallet of Ethereum ($ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

At the same time, while checking every transaction on the list, Ethereum ($ETH) holders revealed that actually these transfers were initiated by a different address that has nothing to do with Vitalik's portfolio.

The name of the token included the address of a suspicious website. On this site — that was created two days ago, according to public "whois" resources — people were invited to take part in a referendum.

Scammers stated that every participant in this referendum will get free Ethereum ($ETH) tokens as long as his/her decision wins:

You will get Ethereum alongside voting power if your voting decision is chosen. Everyone can vote who received the [...] token. Your token balance is your voting power.

No, you can't fork proof-of-stake Ethereum with your crypto holdings

The question of this referendum was the most interesting part of this scam: fraudsters asked whether $ETH holders support or oppose forking Ethereum 2.0.

When pressing the "agree" or "disagree" buttons, the website required users to authorize phishing transactions in their MetaMask wallets. The distribution of Ethers between "winners" was scheduled for Sept. 25, 2022.

As covered by U.Today previously, Ethereum ($ETH) is set to activate the Merge update on Sept. 15, 2022. This upgrade will replace the proof-of-work Ethereum ($ETH) consensus with a proof-of-stake (PoS) one.

Some mining enthusiasts are going to introduce ETHPoW coin as a fork of the initial Ethereum ($ETH) codebase.