Who is The Wriggler and what are they doing with The Worm?
Someone named “The Wriggler” took The Worm off its path. It appears they want to play a game. Here’s everything we know so far.
If you’ve been following the story of The Worm, you know by now that it has a particular flair for veering off path. It’s been stuck in a scammer’s wallet, held hostage in the name of a charity for dogs, and accidentally sent to the wrong wallet several times.
On Saturday, June 18 The Worm once again took a detour. A mysterious entity known as The Wriggler sent The Worm to a mysterious contract address … And it seems they want to play a game.
Backstory: The IOU Pact
For the last few days The Worm has been traveling around Steve Pikelny’s (aka StevieP) Discord server. StevieP is the NFT artist behind the Art Blocks project Fake Internet Money as well as other finance-themed collections like IOU and Negative Value Certificates.
StevieP organized a Pact within the server. To join the Pact server members had to own an IOU and promise to send The Worm to the next person on the Pact list within 12 hours. Anyone who broke the Pact by sending The Worm outside of it was to be punished by having their IOU revoked by StevieP (much like The Worm’s can be called out of a wallet with its yoink function, IOUs are revokable).
28 people joined the IOU Pact and The Worm began its journey.
Betrayal: The Wriggler detours The Worm to a Smart Contract
The Worm was wiggling its way through The Pact when it arrived in The Wriggler’s wallet. But it never made it to the next Pact member. Instead The Wriggler sent The Worm to a Smart Contract.
Smart Contracts are the chunks of Solidity code that can be deployed to the blockchain to control tokens. Sending The Worm to the Smart Contract means that the Smart Contract is in possession of The Worm, and can run code to try to control The Worm.
Here’s everything we know about The Wriggler so far:
Exhibit A: The Wriggler appeared on the Ambition (Worm) server on June 1
Exhibit B: The Wriggler bought their way into the IOU Pact
The Wriggler purchased IOU #248 for 0.095 ETH on June 4 in order to be eligible for the IOU Pact. They used the ETH address 0x01c237C520f0409dc338A8db6569907453895238 to make the purchase.
They also purchased StevieP’s most recent Art Blocks project, Maps of Nothing which dropped on Monday, June 13. They selected a very Worm-like Map, Map #404:
The Wriggler had no other NFTs in this wallet.
Exhibit C: The Wriggler wrote sexy Worm erotica
One June 5, The Wriggler published the following link to StevieP’s server:
Exhibit D: The Wriggler’s Smart Contract is unverified
The Smart Contract where The Wriggler is holding The Worm is unverified, although some developers have been able to decode and read the contract. They are currently looking for clues in the Ambition and StevieP’s Discord servers. We will publish additional information publicly as it comes in.
Exhibit E: The Wriggler posts cryptic messages and riddles
Although The Wriggler at first claimed to be enjoying The Worm’s visit and looking forward to passing it along:
But these messages were soon followed by cryptic ones. Is it a cypher of some kind?
The Wriggler also started a Twitter account, where the cryptic messages continued:
Exhibit F: The Wriggler dares The Worm to be yoinked, but has been able to exploit the yoink function
The “Fatal Flaw” referenced by The Wriggler is most likely an issue with The Worm’s Smart Contract that allows any Smart Contract with possession of The Worm to prevent The Worm’s “yoink” function from being called. The “yoink” function is a special power of The Worm that allows the dev team behind The Worm to call The Worm back out of a wallet if it gets stuck.
Yoink was implemented in September 2021 after The Worm got stuck in a scammer’s wallet (Read: “The Worm Meets Its First Challenge: The Worm is stuck” from Aug 2021).
The Wriggler seems to want The Worm to get yoinked, but Worm mod and Disciple @noohp_ has tested and confirmed that yoink will fail to retrieve The Worm from the Smart Contract where The Wriggler is holding it.
Unfortunately, the yoink function cannot be tried for real right now because the team that assists The Worm is in NYC for NFT_NYC right now and for security reasons, did not bring a device with the keys needed to yoink The Worm.
When informed of this, The Wriggler threatened dire consequences:
Help Solve The Wriggler’s Riddles and Get The Worm Back on Track
Have some leads? Ideas? Know who The Wriggler is? Help us solve the riddle and get The Worm back on track by following it on Twitter at @TheWormNFT and joining the Ambition Discord server.
Praise Be! and Pray for The Worm’s swift escape🪱 🙏 .
