By
Chainwire
April 3rd, 2024
According to Gala Games, the perceived “hack” was actually part of whitehat efforts to protect it from a real potential attack.
Gala Games has called for calm and maintains that everything is fine following fears of a multi-billion-dollar hack. The blockchain gaming company was at the center of some confusion on Thursday, driven by fears that it had been hacked. These fears drove Gala Games’ native GALA token down 25.6% in value and sparked panic on social media.
At the time, a single wallet address appeared to mint more than $2 billion GALA tokens seemingly out of nowhere. This unusual occurrence was subsequently flagged by blockchain security firm PeckShield yesterday, November 3rd. At the height of the confusion, GALA plummeted dramatically from $0.0394 to $0.0293 over 130 minutes, according to GoinGecko. However, Gala Games has come out to explain that the unusual activity was part of efforts to protect it against potential attack. The blockchain gaming platform took to Twitter to dispel any speculation about a crash. Among other things, Gala Games pointed out:
“We noticed pGALA wasn’t to be considered safe anymore and coordinated the white hat attack to prevent pGALA from being maliciously exploited.”
In addition, the blockchain-based platform also suggested that it printed new tokens to help pNetwork empty a faulty PancakeSwap pool. pNetwork also buttressed Gala Games’ assertion on Twitter, but also advised users against interacting with the bridge for a while. A pNetwork Twitter post read:
“The GALA bridge is temporarily suspended. All funds are safe, but please do not send funds to the bridge as pegins and pegouts (redeems) are currently not being processed.”
Gala Games Seemingly Douses Tension Brought About by Rumored Hack
The explanations offered by Gala Games and pNetwork to placate irate users appear to be working as GALA’s price partially recovered to $0.352. However, pNetwork also stated that plans are in progress to launch a new, properly configured pool for users, which contains the same balance as the old one. According to the cross-chain interoperability bridge, “a new pGALA token will be created to replace the old compromised one and airdropped in the coming days to those who had pGALA before the pool was drained.”
Crypto Hacks
The Gala Games hack represents a broader recurring problem within the crypto industry. Blockchain hacks are becoming increasingly more commonplace as the crypto industry rises in popularity. There has been a wave of network breaches, especially in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, as miscreants look to exploit the fledgling technology. This unsavory development also sees increased calls from government quarters regarding a proper blueprint for crypto regulation. As it stands, the legislative arm of countries such as the US is already making giant strides toward comprehensive crypto regulation. This includes proposed bills by lawmakers who also seem to have the approval of regulatory agencies like the securities and exchange commission (SEC).