Polygon restores control of Discord server following $145,000 hack as POL token launch approaches

Quick Take

  • Polygon has regained control of its community Discord server following a hack that allegedly cost one user about $145,000 in assets. 
  • The attack, seemingly from a serial hacker, comes shortly before Polygon’s planned mainnet upgrade on Sep. 4, which will transition its native token MATIC to a new token with the ticker POL. 

Polygon has regained control of its community Discord after it was hijacked for about four hours on Saturday morning, allegedly leading to the theft of about $145,000 in assets from one user. 

"We have regained access and secured the Polygon community discord server. All external bots and integrations have been disabled while we perform a security review of each of them to avoid this from happening again," Polygon wrote on X. 

A fraudulent message was posted to the Polygon Discord at about 5 am GMT, seemingly from the account of its community lead Smokey, contemporaneous screenshots show. The message advertised a "special pre-migration" airdrop ahead of the Polygon network's planned migration from its native MATIC token to the upgraded POL token, which is scheduled for Sep. 4, along with a phishing link. 

At least one user claims to have fallen victim to the attack, and blockchain data backs up their claim of losing a Uniswap position worth about $145,000 in the hack. The transfer transaction occurred about 40 minutes after Polygon's chief information security officer, Mudit Gupta, alerted the Polygon community to the hack with a post on X, which was reposted by Polygon's X account, though it's unclear when the repost occurred. 

The wallet address where the Uniswap position was transferred, which likely belongs to the hacker, appears to have claimed other victims in the past. Ten days ago, the wallet transferred ether worth $72,300 at the time to a wallet flagged by Etherscan as a phishing perpetrator that now holds nearly $400,000 in assets. Five days ago, the wallet transferred $29,500 worth of ether to a different, but similarly flagged, wallet with $150,000 in assets. 

Polygon's team is currently unsure of the mechanism by which its Discord was compromised. "At this moment, we don't believe any of our mods were compromised this way [being phished]. It seems more likely that a bot/integration we had was compromised. Still going through the logs," Gupta posted on X. Gupta also stated that the team plans on releasing a postmortem following a review of the hack. 

Polygon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Block. 


Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2024 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

Zack Abrams is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, New York. Before coming to The Block, he was the Head Writer at Coinage, a Web3 media outlet covering the biggest stories in Web3. The story he co-reported on Do Kwon won a 2022 Best in Business Journalism award from SABEW. Other projects included a deep dive into SBF's defense based on exclusive documents and unveiling the identity of the hacker behind one of 2023's biggest crypto hacks — so far. He can be reached via X @zackdabrams or email, [email protected].