Twitch co-founder's Fractal NFT project gets hijacked — $154,000 stolen
Quick Take
- Ahead of the project’s launch, a bot used for its Discord channel was hacked.
- The perpetrator put a link to a fake NFT site, which sucked money from unsuspecting users.
Usually when an NFT project drops, the one safe space is the announcements channel — it's the only place (except perhaps the FAQ) to look for the official website to mint the NFTs. Only in this case, it was a false friend.
Ahead of the launch of the Fractal NFT drop, a bot used for the project's Discord was hacked. This let the perpetrator send out a message in its announcements channel with a link to a fake minting website (that used an "i" instead of an "l").
Those that clicked on the link were able to spend their crypto — in this case solana (SOL) — on what they thought would be the Fractal NFTs. Only they were hoodwinked and received nothing in return. As a result, the perpetrator made off with some $154,800 in SOL.
Twitch co-founder Justin Kan acknowledged that the scam took place, tweeting, "The announcements bot on our @fractalwagmi discord was hacked. Do not go to any url and connect your wallet / mint anything." Since the theft took place, the project's Discord channel has been locked down.
Fractal is a Solana-based NFT marketplace for the buying and selling of NFts. The project was supposed to go live on December 24 but was going to provide a sneak peak of an airdrop today.
"We have NOT announced any mints - all urls pushing this claim are fraudulent. Do NOT trust these links or mint anything. We will NEVER charge you for an airdrop," the project tweeted following the exploit.
The Fractal team has now said it will reinburse anyone who lost their SOL in the fake mint
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