An inside joke about the “insolvency” of Wrapped Ethereum (wETH) over the weekend has forced influencers to explain it was just a “shitpost” after members of the community took it as real.

The wETH insolvency FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) seemingly began to make the rounds on Nov. 26, with false rumors alleging that wETH isn’t backed 1:1 by Ether (ETH) and is insolvent.

Blockchain developer and contributor to the ERC-721A token standard “cygaar” was one of the first to spread the joke, before confirming in a subsequent post that it was in fact a “shitpost” to see who was reading his content.

This is really a test to see who’s been reading my content.

In fact, only a day before, cygaar tweeted that “WETH cannot ever go insolvent” and that “WETH will always be swappable 1:1 with ETH.”

Ethereum bull and host of The Daily Gwei Anthony Sassano also joined in on the wETH joke with his own parody post on Nov. 27, but had to clarify later that the initial post was “shitpost/ meme” after reading the replies.

Reading the replies I feel like I should clarifyThis is a shitpost/meme - there is nothing wrong with WETH and you can always redeem 1 ETH for 1 WETHThough if you don't believe me I'll buy all of your WETH right now for 0.3 ETHSell me all you wantThen go fuck off

Gnosis co-founder Martin Köppelmann was another one to get in on the joke, claiming in a Nov. 27 Tweet to his 38,800 Twitter followers that wETH is no longer fully backed by ETH and that “we might see a bank run on redeeming WETH soon.”

Hours later, he said he hoped the joke “did not cause too much confusion,” linking to a thread that explained the joke for those who weren't in the know.

I hope this joke did not caused too much confusion. If you need more context