Web3 Gaming Token GALA Crashes After $240M Exploit

Gala Games, a popular web3 gaming network, is reeling after a hacker breached its smart contracts and minted a massive sum of GALA tokens.

The attack triggered a 20% plunge in the price of GALA to $0.038 from roughly $0.047, according to CoinGecko.

A hacker exploited the smart contract for the GALA token and minted tokens worth $240 million.

While the attacker was able to sell roughly 600 million tokens worth $21 million via the decentralized exchange Uniswap, Gala Games moved quickly to freeze the remaining 4.4 billion GALA.

Rogue Admin

“Our ETH contract for $GALA is secure and under the protection of a multi-sig wallet,” Gala CEO Eric Schiermeyer said . “It was never compromised.”

Schiermeyer also took responsibility for the incident, stating that Gala had made mistakes with its internal control.

“This shouldn’t have happened, and we are taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

The breach was first identified by Solidity developer 0xQuit.

“A compromised or rogue Gala Games admin address minted 5 Billion $GALA ($200M) and has been systematically selling the tokens for the past 2 hours,” they tweeted.

Hacker Identified

Gala Games’ CEO noted the project has identified the culprit and are currently working with authorities.

Regarding daily distribution, Schiermeyer said there will be a vote to decide how to handle this matter, emphasizing that the community will decide how they proceed.

In this context, “daily distribution” refers to the regular release of GALA tokens to network participants, such as node operators and users, as rewards for their contributions.

Schiermeyer noted that the frozen 4.4 billion tokens can be considered “effectively burned,” meaning they cannot be transferred or accessed and are therefore considered destroyed.

The price of GALA has since rebounded to around $0.041. This recovery is partly due to a broader market rally, with Ethereum experiencing a 20% surge.

Dominant in GameFi

Gala Games holds a dominant position in the GameFi ecosystem on Ethereum, capturing over 60% of the user base according to data from Dune Analytics. In comparison, The Sandbox follows with 25% of the users, and Axie Infinity comes in third with 11%.

Gala Games has a 60-person team and boasts more than 1.3 million active users worldwide, according to a CoinMarketCap 2021 research report. Some popular titles within the Gala Games ecosystem include Mirandus, Spider Tank, Town Star, Fortified, and Echoes of Empire.

The GALA token is integral to the Gala Games ecosystem, serving as a medium for in-game purchases, rewarding node operators, and enabling governance through voting on platform decisions.