Hackers Steal NFT Monkeys on Top Ethereum Layer 2

The Arbitrum-based NFT market Treasure has been hacked. Builders froze buying and selling after a whole lot of NFTs from the Smol Brains and Legions collections have been stolen. 

Treasure Market Hit by Exploit

The Treasure market has suffered an exploit.

Treasure, the largest NFT market on the Ethereum Layer 2 resolution Arbitrum, was hit by an assault early Thursday morning, leading to a whole lot of NFTs being stolen. Hackers discovered a option to purchase NFTs listed on the Treasure market with out paying for them. Treasure builders shortly reacted by freezing buying and selling on {the marketplace} to keep away from additional harm. 

Treasure is the hub for NFTs within the TreasureDAO NFT ecosystem. As a substitute of utilizing Ethereum or stablecoins to purchase and promote NFTs like on OpenSea, Treasure solely lets customers transact utilizing MAGIC tokens, the ecosystem’s native forex. In keeping with blockchain safety firm PeckShield, an attacker discovered a option to manipulate the worth of listed NFTs on Treasure, permitting them to purchase NFTs for 0 MAGIC tokens. 

PeckShield estimates greater than 100 NFTs have been stolen from {the marketplace} earlier than builders froze buying and selling. One tackle seems to have stolen 17 pixel-art monkeys from the Smol Brains assortment. If bought for the unique itemizing costs, these NFTs would have value a purchaser over $1.4 million value of MAGIC tokens on the time of the hack. Since Smol Brains and one other widespread assortment referred to as Legions are at the moment essentially the most beneficial and actively traded NFTs on Treasure, they seem to have borne the brunt of the exploit. The most cost effective Smol Brains usually commerce for round $9,500 right this moment. 

As information of the exploit circulated on-line, the worth of the MAGIC token dropped sharply, bottoming out at a 33% loss earlier than posting a slight restoration. MAGIC is at the moment buying and selling at $3.38, down 11% from pre-exploit ranges. 

In response to the exploit, TreasureDAO’s GoudaGaarp took to Discord to reassure the Treasure group. “Deepest and sincerest condolences for these impacted by the exploit right this moment,” they wrote. GoudaGaarp went on to elucidate that TreasureDAO had frozen the Treasure market pending a full code assessment. TreasureDAO may also take an lively position in distributing NFTs again to their rightful house owners and plans to suggest a number of remediation choices to make sure customers are made complete.

Nonetheless, because the state of affairs progressed, it appeared that lots of the hackers had a change of coronary heart. A Twitter consumer posting beneath the deal with @Br0keboy96 pointed out that transaction knowledge from Arbiscan reveals dozens of NFTs stolen from Treasure being returned to their rightful house owners. Presumably, the hackers realized that the stolen NFT couldn’t be cashed out resulting from TreasureDAO freezing buying and selling and sure planning to blacklist all stolen NFTs. 

As NFTs have boomed in reputation, exploits and hacks focusing on NFT marketplaces have elevated. Final month, a hacker utilizing phishing emails was in a position to steal roughly thousands and thousands of {dollars} value of NFTs from unsuspecting OpenSea customers. Whereas DeFi protocols and cross-chain bridges have sometimes been widespread targets for hackers, as non-fungible tokens develop in worth and recognition, extra assaults towards functions like Treasure are possible. 

Disclosure: On the time of scripting this piece, the writer owned ETH and several other different cryptocurrencies.