At Least $360,000 in NFTs Stolen From BAYC After Hack

This is the third security breach for BAYC this year

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Michelle Lodge
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Michelle Lodge is a contributor to Investopedia, who is a writer, editor and podcaster. Her editing or writer or both has appeared on CNBC.com and in Barron's, Fortune and Harvard Business Review (white papers). As a Senior Editor at TheStreet.com, she led a team of reporters in retail coverage. For On Wall Street, she was the editor of the On Wall Street Book Club podcast, in which she reviewed books and interviewed their authors. 
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Published June 07, 2022

For the third time, hacking and theft hit the largest non-fungible token (NFT) collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), with the hackers stealing an estimated 20 Ether (ETH), worth $360,000 in NFTs. The security breach happened on Saturday, June 4.

Twitter user NFTherder first reported the hack on June 4, "who also estimates 145 ETH (around $260,000) was stolen along with the NFTs, tracing the stolen funds back to four separate wallets.

Key Takeaways

  • Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) was hacked on Saturday, marking the third time this year.
  • Taken were at least 20 ethers (ETHs), worth $360,000 in nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
  • The Twitter user who first reported the hack speculated that 145 ETHs, about $260,000, were also stolen.


'Still Investigating'

Parent of BAYC, Yuga Labs, followed up on NFTherder's tweet many hours later with this tweet:  “Our Discord servers were briefly exploited today. The team caught and addressed it quickly. About 200 ETH worth of NFTs appear to have been impacted. We are still investigating, but if you were impacted, email us at discord@yugalabs.io.”

According to a spokesperson for Yuga Labs, BAYC’s parent, on Monday, June 6, the company has no further information to report.

The hack happened after project community manager Boris Vagner's Discord account was breached and the attacker then posted phishing links in both the official BAYC and its related metaverse called Otherside's Discord channels.

A BAYC founder Gordon Goner blamed Discord for the security breach, but Steve Fink, another crypto founder, told Fortune: "You lost your NFT because you signed a malicious transaction with your key. Stop blaming Discord, another client won't save you from repeating the same mistakes."

A Banner Year in 2021

The Miami-based blockchain company Yuga Labs launched BAYC, a collection of 10,000 unique Bored Ape NFTs, in April 2022. It followed up with Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) a few months later. By the end of 2021, it had pulled in $127 million; this year, it made two acquisitions.

Saturday’s hack marks the third time an actor has posed as a Yuga-Labs-run account to steal users’ funds. The first and second were on April 1, when Mutant Ape Yacht Club #8662 was stolen through a phishing link posted in the project’s Discord, and on April 25, following the posting of a fake link to an Otherside minting coming from BAYC’s  Instagram and Discord accounts.

The Bottom Line

A BAYC founder blamed Discord for its security breach, but one observer didn't have it, saying you "signed a malicious transaction with your key." Meanwhile, parent company Yuga Labs tweeted that it is "still investigating" the hack."

Article Sources
Investopedia requires writers to use primary sources to support their work. These include white papers, government data, original reporting, and interviews with industry experts. We also reference original research from other reputable publishers where appropriate. You can learn more about the standards we follow in producing accurate, unbiased content in our editorial policy.

  1. The Indian Express. "NFT scams: All the times Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs were stolen."

    ."

  2. Twitter. ''Our Discord servers were briefly exploited today. The team caught and addressed it quickly. About 200 ETH worth of NFTs appear to have been impacted. We are still investigating, but if you were impacted, email us at discord@yugalabs.io.''

  3. Fortune. "Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Discord server was hacked, with $360,000 in NFTs stolen. Who’s to blame is debated."

  4. NTFnow.com. "Yuga Labs: The NFT Company Taking Over the Metaverse."

  5. The Indian Express. "NFT scams: All the times Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs were stolen."

  6. The Indian Express. "NFT scams: All the times Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs were stolen."

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