The South Korean platform for blockchain game development and a trading platform for non-fungible tokens (NFT), PlayDapp, faced serious financial losses due to an exploit that lasted four days, resulting in the loss of over $290 million in cryptocurrency. The exploit began on February 9, when an unauthorized wallet issued 200 million PLA tokens worth $36 million at the time. It was determined that the wallet was added after the compromise of the token's smart contract private keys, leading to the protocol being hacked.
In response to the incident, PlayDapp offered the hacker a $1 million reward for the return of the funds by February 13 and threatened to involve law enforcement. However, the hacker continued their actions, minting an additional 1.59 billion PLA tokens worth $249.6 million and began laundering the stolen funds through various blockchains.
In an attempt to stop the further spread of the stolen tokens, PlayDapp called on centralized exchanges to suspend PLA deposit and withdrawal transactions and froze the hacker's wallets. At the time of the article's publication, the platform is investigating the methods of the hacker's intrusion, tracking the issued and exchanged tokens, and negotiating with exchanges about migration solutions, including airdrops.
PlayDapp also called on PLA token holders and DEX operators to suspend transactions and liquidity pool activities for PLA tokens as a precaution, emphasizing that protecting the assets of holders is a priority. As a result of these events, the value of the PLA token fell by more than 18%, from $0.182 to $0.148.
