“All is well” – Gala Games pleads for calm after multi-billion dollar hacking scare
Blockchain gaming company Gala Games urged the community to calm down after misplaced fears of a multi-billion dollar rug pull or hack caused the GALA token to temporarily crash 25.6%.
The initial panic, which Gala Games later suggested was unfounded, came after a single wallet address appeared to mint over $2 billion of GALA tokens out of thin air – which was flagged by blockchain security firm PeckShield on November 3rd.
Fears that the unusual activity was a sign of an exploit or blanket move caused the GALA token price to drop a dramatic 25.6% from $0.0394 to $0.0293 over a 130-minute stretch late on November 3, according to data from CoinGecko.
However, Gala Games took to Twitter on November 4 to remove the “FUD” surrounding its original token, explaining that “a lot of people are throwing around words like ‘hack’ and ‘blanket’. Neither of those are the case.”
Update for everyone – there is a LOT of FUD out there $GALA…lots of people throwing around words like “hack” and “carpet”. None of these are the case.
Here’s the real story – read this update from @BitBenderBrink and @pNetworkDeFi. https://t.co/ruI16v2Lkv
— Gala Game – Spider Tanks is LIVE! (@GoGalaGames) 4 November 2022
Gala Games president of blockchain Jason Brink explained that the unusual activity detected on decentralized exchange (DEX) PancakeSwap was carried out by pNetwork, which was working to drain its liquidity pool as a means of protecting it from a potential vulnerability.
Before you panic $GALAread this thread from @pNetworkDeFi.
TLDR: Everything is good. The activity you have viewed @PancakeSwap pNetwork is working on draining the liquidity pool. GALA on ETH is completely unaffected.
Don’t buy $pGALA on PancakeSwap for now https://t.co/bAnHxlVcp1
— Jason Brink aka BitBender (@BitBenderBrink) 3 November 2022
In a separate tweet, pNetwork, the cross-chain interoperability bridge used by Gala Games on the Binance Smart Chain, confirmed that a “misconfiguration” event occurred. It also responded to a tweet from Peckshield to note that it “coordinated the white hat attack” to prevent pGALA from being exploited:
Yes, we noticed that pGALA was no longer considered safe and coordinated the white hat attack to prevent pGALA from being exploited maliciously. Funds are safe, but users should NOT transfer or buy/sell pGALA on pancake exchange
— pNetwork (@pNetworkDeFi) 3 November 2022
The explanations seem to have calmed some panic and the GALA token price has since partially recovered from its 24-hour low of $0.0293 to now stand at $0.352.
Related: Big hack on games to earn crypto games a “matter of time:” Report
Gala Games confirmed that all GALA tokens on Ethereum and GALA-related assets on the GALA bridge were safe, the team, along with pNetwork, informed the community of their decision to “temporarily suspend” transaction activity on the bridge.
Brink also advised against buying pGALA on PancakeSwap “for now.”
“A new pGALA token will be created to replace the old compromised one” that will be sent to those who owned pGALA before the pool was emptied, pNetwork said.
