Gala Games (GALA-USD) and the broader crypto space mostly missed out on a major event on Monday. No, it wasn’t the ETH-USD ETF FOMO – this was the opposite of FOMO. Gala Games was hacked, tokens were minted, transfers were made… and the hacker returned the money. $23 million of it.
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Traders were spooked by a massive transfer of GALA tokens, suspected to be due to a hack. And boy, were they right. At $0.039, GALA’s price plummeted 19% from its peak, thanks to the unexpected minting of 5 billion tokens by some mystery entity and their sale on Uniswap (UNI-USD).
The Great Coin Minting Panic
Imagine waking up to find 5 billion new GALA tokens minted out of nowhere and dumped on Uniswap. No warning, no heads-up, just chaos. Gala Games’ reps were MIA on their Discord server. Traders freaked out, assuming the worst—a hack.
The lack of immediate communication from Gala Games only made things worse, sparking a rapid sell-off and a steep price drop. The market’s reaction was swift and brutal. GALA’s price crashed to $0.039, a sharp 19% decline.
The Hacker’s Surprising Move
But then something weird happened. The hacker decided to return around $23 million in Ethereum to Gala Games. Yes, you read that right. On-chain records and Discord confirmations show that the ETH made its way back.
Eric Schiermeyer, Gala Games’ CEO, mentioned in a Discord chat, “We will probably buy and burn on galaswap,” suggesting they’ll use the returned ETH to buy GALA tokens and remove them from circulation, which could help stabilize the token’s value.
Schiermeyer added, “We believe we have identified the culprit and are currently working with the FBI, DOJ, and a network of international authorities.” It seems Gala’s swift action and federal involvement paid off.
Here’s how it went down: the hacker minted $200 million worth of GALA tokens but only managed to sell a portion before Gala’s team froze the wallet. By May 21, the attacker’s wallet had returned 5,913.2 ETH, worth about $22.3 million. Gala Games deployed their new “GalaChain’s blocklist protocol” to freeze 4.4 billion of the 5 billion minted tokens within 45 minutes of the attack.
Community and Investor Reactions
DWF Labs, a Gala investor, tried to stabilize the situation by buying 28 million GALA tokens. Despite their efforts, GALA was still trading below its pre-hack highs. The Gala community is now buzzing with speculation about the hacker’s identity, with some suggesting it might have been a security contractor who slipped up by connecting to the wallet without a VPN.
Meanwhile, a governance vote is underway to decide if the 4.4 billion blocklisted GALA tokens should be considered “burned.” This could help stabilize the token’s value and restore some confidence in Gala Games’ security measures.
Is Gala Games a Buy?
According to TipRanks’ Summary of Technical Indicators, Gala Games is a Buy.
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