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Hong Kong NFT project Monkey Kingdom loses $1.3M in phishing hack, launches compensation fund

December 22, 2021No Comments


On Tuesday, Solana Monkey Kingdom's non-fungible token (NFT) project, which has received notable endorsement from American DJ Steve Aoki, announced via Twitter that hackers took $ 1.3 million of the community's crypto funds. via a security breach on Discord.

According to its developers, the hack occurred for the first time with the breach of Grape, a popular solution for verifying users on Solana. The hackers then used the exploit to take over an administrative account, which posted a phishing link on the Monkey Kingdom Discord ad channel. Users who followed the link connected their wallets expecting to receive an NFT, but the scammer took away their SOL tokens.

Tragically, the hack took place when users were queuing for the second installment of the project. Monkey kingdom consists of 2,222 algorithmically generated NFTs centered on Sun Wukong, also known as "The Monkey King" in Chinese folklore. All proceeds from the initial sale of the NFTs would go to a charity of choice, with the intention of supporting Asian communities around the world. It was one of the most successful NFT projects that originated in Asia.

Related: Beeple's Discord compromised, scheduled to coincide with Christie's auction

A Twitter user, who goes by the name "commenstar," claims to have lost 650 SOLs, worth approximately $ 120,400, due to the scam. But not all is lost. Monkey Kingdom staff have set aside a compensation fund for victims and are on track to fully reimburse those affected. The timeline and process for distributing the funds have yet to be disclosed.

Phishing attacks are nothing new to the crypto industry. Over the past year, scammers have repeatedly been targeting Discord users and exploiting the platform, itself, to orchestrate such NFT hacks.