Scammers built several fake accounts copying the artist Tyler Hobbs this week. The accounts claimed his QQL mint had reopened1. Quit, Yuga Labs' vice president of blockchain, posted a warning on X late on Oct. 19. He said one wallet had already been drained. A second was saved only by a security tool. The real QQL auction raised $16.7 million, or $16,700,000, from collectors in 2022. That figure is the one the fake posts copied to look real.
A Name Worth Borrowing
Tyler Hobbs built his reputation on generative art years before this week's scam6. Generative art lets code place each shape and color, under rules an artist sets in advance. A collector who mints one receives the code's own one-time output. That exact result stays beyond even the artist's own power to repeat. His series Fidenza sold through Art Blocks. The sale made him one of the field's best known names. In 2021 he partnered with Dandelion Mané, a software engineer who had worked at Google Brain and at Protocol Labs. Hobbs describes what they built in his own words: “QQL is an experiment in collaborative generative art created by myself and Dandelion Mané, where we invite collectors to take on one of the most important aspects of shaping a series and become curators.”
A Mint Pass is the ticket into that process. It lets a holder generate and claim one official QQL artwork, on a schedule the holder picks6. QQL created 999 passes on Sept. 19, 2021. Exploring the algorithm itself stays free for every visitor to the site, pass in hand or pass still unbought. Minting one official piece is the part a pass actually unlocks. A holder can wait years before spending a pass this way. QQL ties the mint window only to the holder's own choice, apart from any sale date. That pace sits far from the one-day rush a scammer needs to make a fake offer feel urgent.
Every QQL output also ties itself to the minter's own wallet address. That address feeds the randomness the algorithm runs on, so the same seed produces a different piece for a different owner5. The design gives each mint a signature only its own minter could have produced. Copying the visual look of someone's QQL is simple. Reproducing the exact piece under a different wallet stays out of reach by the math itself.
QQL's real auction ran in 2022. The project sold 900 of its passes publicly, starting the bidding at 50 ETH1. Demand cooled as the sale went on. The final price settled at 14 ETH a pass. That cleared total came to 12,600 ETH, worth $16.7 million at the time. Hobbs later carried the project past screens entirely. Pace Gallery exhibited twelve of his QQL outputs as paintings in New York in 2023. He made them with the help of a robotic plotter6.
QQL's Real 2022 Auction Opened at 50 ETH and Cleared at 14 ETH
Starting and clearing price of QQL's 900 public Mint Passes, sold in 2022, in ETH
- Opening price: 50 ETH
- Clearing price: 14 ETH
Source: crypto.news [1].
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Opening price | 50 ETH | The price this week's fake posts copied |
| Clearing price | 14 ETH |
Both sides, in their own words
Does a familiar name still move crypto money faster than any warning can catch it?
“a browser extension that keeps your assets safe when you sign Web3 transactions”
“I would never let a checkmark do the thinking for me when money, passwords or a crypto wallet are involved”
A Warning, Short on Confirmation
Quit carries the title of vice president of blockchain at Yuga Labs. TechCrunch calls the company the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club7. Bored Ape art now turns up well past its own blockchain. A Bored and Hungry restaurant built its brand on the same apes, Entrepreneur reported in 20228. That kind of name recognition cuts both ways. It builds a real business around a real piece of art, and it gives a scammer a name worth copying in the first place.
Quit posted his warning after spotting several accounts using Hobbs's name and photo1. “Scammer is making several accounts impersonating Tyler Hobbs. Please do not interact,” he wrote. He added a detail that showed the stakes directly. “Already aware of one person who got drained and one who would've if not for pocket universe,” he said.
That sentence is also where the public record stops short. Crypto.news looked for a transaction hash behind the claim. It looked for a wallet address and a published dollar loss too1. The outlet found zero of the three attached anywhere to Quit's warning. A theft like the one Quit described usually leaves a trail. Its drained wallet's outgoing transfer would sit on Ethereum's own public ledger, open to anyone who checks the address. This piece can point to zero transaction, zero block height, and zero explorer link to back the claim past Quit's own words.
QQL's own site names one verified contract for every real Mint Pass. A buyer can check that contract on Etherscan before sending a single payment5. The fake posts skipped past that step entirely. They asked buyers to send 50 ETH straight to a brand new offer. That price would run roughly $118,985 at ETH's $2,379.69 on CoinGecko, as of 09:14 UTC on Oct. 202. QQL's real minting process stays open on each holder's own timeline. The project has floated zero new public sale to match the one the scam invented.
One Fake 50 ETH Ask Equaled 0.7% of QQL's Real 2022 Sale
This week's fake 50 ETH ask in dollars, against QQL's total 2022 Mint Pass auction revenue
- Fake 50 ETH ask: $118,985
- 2022 sale total: $16,700,000
Sources: crypto.news [1]; CoinGecko [2].
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Fake 50 ETH ask | $118,985 |
| 2022 sale total | $16,700,000 |
Familiar Names Keep Getting Borrowed
A verified name failing to protect anyone marks a pattern more than an exception. Microsoft's own X account carries more than 13 million followers. Attackers broke into it on Oct. 1 and pushed a fake token called Clippy, Fox News reported3. Microsoft confirmed the breach in plain terms. It called the posts ones that "did not originate from Microsoft" and said "the unauthorized posts have been removed".
Pocket Universe makes the case that a tool can still catch what a name alone misses. The company describes its browser extension plainly: “a browser extension that keeps your assets safe when you sign Web3 transactions”4. It works by simulating a transaction before a user signs it, then flagging anything that looks designed to drain a wallet. Its record in this very story backs that pitch. Quit credited the extension with stopping a second drain in the same scheme1.
Fox News technology writer Kurt Knutsson draws the opposite lesson from the same kind of event. “I would never let a checkmark do the thinking for me when money, passwords or a crypto wallet are involved,” he wrote, after covering Microsoft's own breach3. His point reaches past any single platform's badge. A scammer skips the hard work of breaking a name outright. Borrowing it for one afternoon does the job just as well.
Hobbs and Mané built a project that still runs exactly as they designed it. It stays slow, collector-paced, and free to explore at zero cost56. The 50 ETH version strangers faced down this week stood apart from anything the two artists actually built.
By the numbers
- Real 2022 total: QQL's 900 public Mint Passes raised $16.7 million in that auction1.
- Opening bid: 50 ETH, the same price the fake posts copied this week1.
- Clearing price: the real auction actually settled at 14 ETH a pass1.
- Pass count: QQL created 999 Mint Passes on Sept. 19, 20216.
- ETH's price: $2,379.69 on CoinGecko, as of 09:14 UTC on Oct. 20, 20262.
- Microsoft's reach: more than 13 million followers sat on the X account attackers hijacked for Clippy3.
- Pocket Universe's user base: the firm counts more than 200,000 users of its extension4.
What to watch
QQL's holders can still mint through the one contract the project's own site lists. The project has floated zero new public sale beyond that5. Watch for Hobbs or Mané to post their own confirmation of a wallet loss. That confirmation stays outstanding through any channel checked for this piece. A published transaction hash would settle what crypto.news could only report secondhand. Watch, too, whether X suspends the accounts Quit flagged, the kind of cleanup Microsoft reported managing on its own compromised account3. Collectors who check a contract address against a project's own page before paying keep that choice in their own hands. The name on an account asking for ETH proves only as much as that check allows.
Sources
- Rony Roy, "Scammers impersonate Tyler Hobbs in fake QQL NFT mint scheme," crypto.news, Oct. 20, 2026, https://crypto.news/scammers-impersonate-tyler-hobbs-in-fake-qql-nft-mint-scheme
- "Ethereum (ETH) Price Today," CoinGecko, Oct. 20, 2026, https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ethereum
- Kurt Knutsson, "Why verified social media accounts can still lead you into a scam," Fox News, Oct. 11, 2026, https://www.foxnews.com/tech/why-verified-social-media-accounts-still-lead-scam
- "Pocket Universe," pocketuniverse.app, retrieved Oct. 20, 2026, https://www.pocketuniverse.app/
- "About," qql.art, retrieved Oct. 20, 2026, https://qql.art/about
- Tyler Hobbs, "QQL," tylerxhobbs.com, retrieved Oct. 20, 2026, https://www.tylerxhobbs.com/words/qql
- "Bored Apes creator Yuga Labs appoints Activision's Daniel Alegre as CEO," TechCrunch, Dec. 19, 2022, https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/19/bored-apes-creator-yuga-labs-appoints-activisions-daniel-alegre-as-ceo
- "Bored and Hungry, the fast food restaurant that uses NFT's from the Bored Ape Yacht Collection for its image," Entrepreneur, May 3, 2022, https://www.entrepreneur.com/money-finance/bored-and-hungry-the-fast-food-restaurant-that-uses-nfts/427161