Wemix Foundation bridge hacked for $6.2 million
The Wemix Foundation, which runs the blockchain gaming platform WEMIX, suffered a $6.2 million hack of their blockchain bridge. Although the hack occurred on February 28, the company did not disclose the theft until four days after the incident, leading some to accuse Wemix of attempting to cover up the hack. Wemix has denied those allegations, claiming that the delay was in hopes of preventing market panic, and to ensure they had time to patch any security vulnerabilities before publicly disclosing a breach.
Around 9,000 wallets used with Cardex fantasy trading card game compromised
Around $400,000 in ETH was stolen from around 9,000 wallets on the Abstract layer-2 network, which is built by the same company that makes the Pudgy Penguins NFTs. It appears that the affected wallets had all been used to play Cardex, a fantasy trading card game that had launched only a week prior.
Attackers compromised a private key belonging to the game's creators, which allowed them to drain wallets that still had an active session with the game.
CoinPoker exploited for $2 million
Crypto-powered poker website CoinPoker was apparently exploited for around $2 million when an attacker was able to compromise a hot wallet controlled by the platform. The attacker then laundered most of the funds through the Tornado Cash mixer.
The platform sent a message to the exploiter attempting to negotiate a return of some of the funds.
Blockchain company Forte acquires games studios, demands secrecy, shuts them down
Sometime in 2023, blockchain firm Forte acquired game studios Phoenix Labs and Rumble Games. However, it would be a year before this came to light, because according to a report from Game Developer, Forte demanded secrecy from employees. (Forte refutes this). In both cases, some employees believed that Forte was funding their development, but didn't find out until later that Forte owned the companies.
Both studios had several games in progress, and two of Phoenix Labs' games were explicitly designed for younger players. Developers reportedly voiced discomfort with incorporating blockchains into the games, selling digital items to children.
Later, Forte pulled the plug on several in-development games at both studios. Then, Forte shut down Rumble in 2024, laying off all employees. Forte also laid off over 100 people from Phoenix Labs that year.
Flappy Bird creator disavows crypto spin-off
A blockchain-based version of the 2014 hit game Flappy Bird has emerged, taking advantage of the recent "tap-to-earn" crypto craze. The @flappy_bird Twitter account posted "I AM BACK!!" on September 12, with a video compilation showing people playing the original game. The tweet also claimed they were "working with [Flappy Bird's] predecessor", leading many to believe that the original Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen was involved with the project.
Nguyen famously removed the game from app stores shortly after it surged to popularity, stating that he felt guilty that people were becoming addicted to the game. This makes the game's reappearance — complete with loot boxes and other addictive features — feel somewhat dark.
On September 15, Nguyen returned from a seven-year Twitter hiatus to post: "No, I have no related with their game. I did not sell anything. I also don't support crypto."
Although Nguyen held the Flappy Bird trademark, he did not sell it to this group. Instead, they registered the trademark themselves after arguing he had abandoned it.
Eve Online developer angers fans with announcement that their new game will be blockchain-based
CCP, the developer of the Eve Online space MMORPG, has angered their fanbase with a new announcement that their upcoming game will be built on the blockchain and incorporate cryptocurrency for in-game transactions. According to an FAQ, the spin-off game (previously called "Project Awakening" and now titled "Eve Frontier") will use a layer-2 blockchain called Redstone.
"There is still time. You can still roll it back and pretend it never happened. Please. None of us want this crypto slop, this desperate cash grab, this attempt at 'creating something great,' this game where buzzwords seem more important than gameplay," wrote one player on the game's subreddit.
A tweet announcing the game was celebrated by some crypto advocates, but attracted some critical responses from players. One wrote, "releasing a blockchain game a year after the weird hype about that technology died so now you got a shitty concept and don't even get a pay-off for it. let's see how this is going to turn out :)"
$12 million taken by whitehats from Ronin bridge
The Ronin bridge, which bridges crypto assets to the Ronin Network used by Axie Infinity and other gaming projects, has once again suffered a breach — though a considerably smaller one than the recordbreaking $625 million theft in March 2022. An update to the bridge code introduced a flaw with respect to how transactions were confirmed.
Fortunately for the Ronin team, it seems that most of the losses actually went to whitehats and MEV bots that were frontrunning transactions by would-be exploiters. ETH and USDC priced at around $12 million were taken — the maximum amount before triggering a safety feature in the code. Later that day, Ronin announced that the ETH (worth around $10 million) had been returned, and that the USDC was in the process of being returned. They also announced that they would reward the whitehats with a $500,000 bug bounty reward.
The Ronin bridge was taken offline shortly after the flaw was detected, and the team announced it would undergo an audit before being brought back online.
Logan Paul files defamation lawsuit over Coffeezilla's coverage of his failed CryptoZoo project
A year and a half after threatening to sue YouTuber Coffeezilla for his series of videos exposing influencer Logan Paul's (alleged) role in (allegedly) scamming his large following with a failed blockchain game, Paul has followed through on the threat. Although he acknowledges in the lawsuit that the project was definitely a scam, Paul says that he too was duped by several "conmen" who he'd brought on as advisers.
In the lawsuit, Paul claims that Coffeezilla knowingly falsely accused Paul of being in on the scam in hopes of getting more attention on his videos. Paul is seeking more than $75,000 in damages.
In January 2024, Paul filed suit against the advisers he's described as "conmen". He's also pointed the finger at them while defending a potential class action complaint from defrauded investors.
Farcana token plummets 60% amid murky explanations
The token for the Farcana blockchain shooting game plummeted in value by around 60%. First, the project team announced that one of the project wallets had been compromised. However, they later deleted that tweet, then claimed that one of their market makers had been compromised. They emphasized that their wallets had not been hacked, and that their smart contracts had not been exploited.
23.8 million FAR were taken from a wallet, and the majority were sold for around $164,000 in USDT. The exploiter still holds 3.4 million FAR, which are notionally worth $83,250 but not likely to be sellable for that amount.
Farcana raised $10 million in seed funding in November 2023 from investors including Animoca and Polygon Ventures.
Gala Games suffers $21 million hack
Someone was able to mint 5 billion $GALA tokens, the native token of the Gala Games blockchain gaming project. The tokens would be notionally worth around $200 million based on their paper value, although such a massive amount wouldn't be sellable without impacting the token price. Furthermore, the Gala Games team was able to add the attacker's address to a blocklist shortly after the theft a few hours after the attack began, preventing them from swapping more of the tokens.
Altogether, the attacker was able to swap around $21 million of the GALA tokens into ETH before the address was frozen.
The attacker was able to perform the exploit because they had access to a wallet with admin access to the Gala Games smart contract. It's not clear if the attacker is a rogue employee, or if an admin wallet was compromised.
As of writing, Gala Games has not publicly acknowledged the attack.
- Thief wallet on Etherscan [archive]
- Tweet by 0xQuit [archive]