By
Temitope Olatunji
April 18th, 2024
By the time of writing, the Roll social token platform has not issued an official statement about the attack, although a representative for Roll confirmed that the project’s hot wallet was the target of the hack.
Roll, a platform for minting and issuing social tokens, has experienced a massive attack, leading to a loss estimated at about $5.7 million. The hack which happened in the early hours of Sunday has been confirmed by various sources on social media including the founder of WHALE, a social token, built on the network and backed by tangible and rare Non-Fungible Token (NFT) assets.
Per the attack as it relates to the WHALE token, it was revealed about 2.17% of the social token was compromised through a hack on Roll’s hot wallet. The official Whale handle noted the hack had a minimal impact on the token and that the project “will find a way to absorb this so it has zero impact on our short, mid and long term growth of $WHALE”
Besides helping to create tokens that can help incentivize communities, Roll provides custodial Ethereum wallets capable of sending and receiving social money from the Ethereum blockchain and within the Roll network. The platform has seen increased embrace over the years as confirmed by the projects which have built on it.
An analysis by Igor Igamberdiev suggests about $5.7 million in ETH was carted away during the attack. Igor also pointed out that some of the affected social tokens include WHALE, MORK, JULIEN, CHERRY, and KARMA amongst others.
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Two hours ago, someone sold a huge amount of social tokens issued on Roll platform.
As a result, an attacker earned almost 3k ETH ($5.7M), of which 700 have already been sent to Tornado Cash.
Most of social token prices dumped as a result. pic.twitter.com/WmdMogBBnd
— Igor Igamberdiev (@FrankResearcher) March 14, 2021
By the time of writing, the Roll social token platform has not issued an official statement about the attack, although a representative for Roll confirmed that the project’s hot wallet was the target of the hack, stating:
“We’re looking into a vulnerability in our hot wallet and will share more details as soon as possible.”
According to Igor, the attack might have been an inside job based on the mode in which the hacker exploited the system. The funds accessed were reportedly sent to Tornado Cash to prevent it from being tracked.
Social Tokens Took a Deep Plunge Following the Roll Platform Attack
The prices of the affected social tokens nosedived with many including WHALE falling as much as 50% when the news broke. At the time of writing, the token is still down by 33.30% to $28.02. Other tokens including JULIEN, CHERRY, KARMA, and MORK were also negatively impacted by the hack, with a corresponding dip in price.
The plunge was unprecedented as the entire cryptocurrency market remains poised to soar following Bitcoin’s latest surge to a new all-time high valuation above $60,000. The hack halted some of the social token’s journies to new price discoveries, as the WHALE token, for instance, attained its all-time high price of $52.56 on Saturday, a day before the attack.
The unforeseen hack has also given a good boost to Rally (RLY), the native currency of Roll’s competitor. The RLY token is trading at $0.9175 up 18.37% at the time of writing according to CoinMarketCap.