DANNY DE HEKLet’s talk about MetFi DAO — the so-called “decentralized investment fund” that wants you to believe it’s incubating the next big Web3 unicorn.

But take one scroll through their website, a skim of their social media, or a glance at their YouTube Channel, and it doesn’t take long to realise you’re looking at yet another DeFi-flavoured Ponzi scheme dressed up in buzzwords and hype.

Let’s break it down.

First up, the website is a single page — yep, just one long scroll that looks fancy but hides the fact that there are no Terms & Conditions, no Privacy Policy, and no legal disclosures. For a company claiming to manage millions in token value and distribute over $74 million in “rewards,” that’s not just suspicious — it’s reckless.

They don’t even publish a proper whitepaper. The PDF is literally blank except for a link that says “Whitepaper v3 coming soon.” You know what that means? Nothing is verified, and nothing is accountable.

Now let’s talk about the real bait: the METFI Multiplier NFTs. You can start with a “Shrimp” NFT for 100 USDT and scale up to a “Humpback” with a 10x multiplier. The higher your NFT tier, the more METFI tokens you generate. These tokens compound daily, and you can withdraw or “swap” them for treasury assets. Of course, there’s a twist — a 10% burn tax on swaps, and the rest is just recycled back to other NFT holders.

Sound familiar? That’s because it’s a closed-loop token system, where early investors get paid from the funds of later ones. In other words, a Ponzi model.

Every six months, they cut the token multiplier in half — trying to mimic Bitcoin’s halving cycles. But Bitcoin is driven by market demand and miner economics. METFI? It’s driven by scarcity theatre, manipulating urgency to get people to buy in before the next halving.

And how do you buy in? Through their MetFi App, of course. You can’t stake anywhere else. Control the entry, control the exit — textbook centralisation hidden behind the word “DAO.”

Let’s not ignore the social media circus. Their Telegram group phones new members to ask if they’ve “participated” yet. That’s not community — that’s high-pressure MLM sales tactics. Their X account pushes milestone celebrations like “1,000 Days of MetFi,” claiming success by longevity alone. But here’s the thing — even BitConnect lasted that long.

The YouTube channel? Oh, it’s a goldmine of cringe. Over 75 videos hyping up:

  • MetBot AI Trading Bot
  • Marine Moguls ERC-404 NFTs
  • MetaBid auctions
  • Ocean Summit events
  • Free airdrops, token boosts, and influencer rankings

They’ve posted tutorials on “How to buy crypto at 99% off” and even launched a “learn-to-earn AI quiz game”. It’s a scattergun of DeFi buzzwords with one purpose: pull in retail investors who want easy money.

Their “investments” include names like Big Time, Evermoon, Sona Protocol, and a handful of others no one can verify. The ROI? Nowhere to be seen. There’s no evidence of equity, no legal structure for funding rounds, and no governance transparency.

And remember their promise of decentralisation? MetFi says the DAO votes on major decisions. But the more METFI and higher NFT you hold, the more votes you get. That’s not community — that’s a plutocracy wrapped in smart contract theatre.

Even their Certik audit, which they parade as proof of legitimacy, raises red flags. Despite MetFi claiming it “passed with flying colors,” the audit highlighted two major findings:

  • Centralization Risks: The so-called “Realm Guardian” holds manual control over key functions like treasury disbursements and token listings. Certik noted the risk of a bad actor taking control. MetFi downplayed this by saying multi-sig wallets are used — but they refused to renounce ownership, admitting that doing so would “freeze the DAO.”
  • Flashloan Vulnerability: Certik warned that MetFi’s architecture could allow minting exploitation via flashloan — a risk MetFi dismissed as “technically impossible.” The system relies on token purchases from the open market rather than minting — but even if the risk hasn’t been exploited yet, it’s baked into the architecture.

Certik also reported 6 minor findings, including input validation issues, misleading value displays, and code design inconsistencies — plus 3 gas optimization opportunities that MetFi mostly ignored because redeploying the smart contracts would be inconvenient.

The audit didn’t confirm security — it confirmed dependence on centralized actors, the presence of governance theatre, and high-risk manual control points masked behind smart contract complexity.

Let’s be clear: MetFi isn’t here to incubate the future of Web3. It’s here to extract value from anyone gullible enough to believe a fish-themed NFT will make them rich.

It’s got all the signs:

  • Token multipliers to reward early adopters
  • Gamified staking and compounding rewards
  • No legal entity, no accountability
  • Phone-based onboarding to pressure new victims
  • A marketing machine built to look legitimate, but structured to trap
  • An audit that confirmed more than it cleared

MetFi DAO wants to be the next Web3 kingmaker, but once you pull back the curtain, all you find is the same Ponzi playbook — repackaged with NFTs, AI bots, and decentralised jargon.

Stay sharp. Stay sceptical. And whatever you do, don’t feed the whales.

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