GALA Ethereum Contract Exploit Leads To $200 Million Losses

Key Points:

• The GALA Ethereum contract was exploited, leading to the unauthorized minting and sale of 5 billion GALA tokens, worth about $200 million.
• The company has advised all token holders to immediately migrate to a new V2 contract before the V1 contract expires at midnight UTC.

Gala Games, one of the largest Web3 gaming protocols, suffered a major security breach on Monday, in which a hacker exploited a smart contract to mint 5 billion GALA tokens, valued at around $200 million. The company urgently advised all its token holders to migrate to a new V2 contract to prevent financial loss.

GALA Ethereum Contract Exploited, 5 Billion GALA Tokens Minted Illegally

The unauthorized minting and sale of these tokens on the Uniswap decentralized exchange made the value of GALA drop by a drastic 15% within hours. In order to contain the damage, Gala Games issued detailed instructions on the migration process through official channels, reminding everyone how important it is to complete the transfer before the old V1 contract expires at midnight UTC. Those who fail to migrate will see the GALA Ethereum contract decommissioned and, hence, face severe financial losses.

An investigation on-chain revealed that the address responsible for the exploit had admin-level clearance, granting it the ability to execute arbitrary actions involving the smart contract. Before the blocklist feature of the GALA Ethereum contract was triggered, the exploiter was able to transfer about $21 million to Ethereum, so preventing more sales. In spite of this, the attacker was able to sell 600 million GALA tokens, which at the time were worth about $29 million.

Scammers Exploit Crisis with Fake Token Migration Events

Scammers posing as Gala Games’ official profile on X, formerly known as Twitter, and advertising a phony token migration event escalated the situation. When consumers interacted with the linked links, the fraudulent schemes presented a serious risk to their funds and displayed slight modifications in the user handle.

Gala Games asks its community to stay vigilant and not follow any migration instructions from any other source but the official one to avoid being scammed. The swift response and precautionary measures are very important for the integrity and value of GALA tokens.