Massive $200M Theft In Popular Web3 Game Drives Crypto Hack Losses Beyond $1B This Year

Web3 game Gala Games fell victim to a $214 million hack on Monday, causing its native token Gala (CRYPTO: GALA) to plummet in the aftermath.

What Happened: An unscrupulous player exploited a loophole on the platform and ended up minting a staggering 5 billion GALA tokens, worth $214 million at the time of the exploit, according to on-chain tracking platform Lookonchain. 

The hacker then started dumping the stolen coins, swapping about 592 million GALA for Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH). The increased selling pressure caused GALA to tank by 19% within an hour.  

Gala Games CEO Eric Schiermeyer, who goes by the pseudonym "benefactor" on X, confirmed the hacking incident later, saying, "We messed up our internal controls."

Schiermeyer assured that unauthorized access to the Gala smart contract was removed, and the perpetrator had been identified. He added that the team was working with law enforcement agencies like the FBI and DOJ to bring the culprit to justice soon.

Lookonchain verified that the hacker’s address was frozen to prevent further selling.

Price Action: At the time of writing, GALA was trading at $0.0413, following a 5.56% dip in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro. The timely blacklisting of the hacker's address prevented further losses for the coin.

Why It Matters: With the latest exploit, the total amount lost to Web3 hackers in 2024 surged to over a billion, according to blockchain security firm SlowMist. The total number of hacking incidents in the year increased to 180.

The total amount hacked in 2024 remained consistent with the rate observed in 2023, when around $2.4 billion was abused throughout the year. 

2021 remains the worst year on record for cryptocurrency hacks, with nearly $9.8 billion worth of losses during the year. Interestingly, it was also the year of cryptocurrency's last bull market.

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