PlayDapp, a South Korean blockchain gaming platform and NFT marketplace, suffered a significant loss of over $290 million in cryptocurrency over a four-day period due to an exploit. The trouble began on February 9 when an unauthorized wallet created 200 million PLA tokens valued at $36 million at the time. This incident occurred after the private keys of PlayDapp’s native token, PLA, were compromised, allowing the protocol to be hacked.
In response, PlayDapp offered the hacker a white hat bounty of $1 million to return the funds by February 13, threatening legal action if the offer was not accepted. However, the attacker proceeded to mint an additional 1.59 billion PLA tokens worth $249.6 million and began laundering the stolen funds by transferring them across various blockchains.
To impede further movement of the tokens, PlayDapp requested centralized exchanges to suspend PLA deposit and withdrawal transactions, and the hacker’s wallets were frozen. Investigations are ongoing to determine the intrusion methods used by the hacker, track the tokens’ movement, and collaborate with exchanges on migration solutions.
PlayDapp emphasized the importance of halting transactions to conduct a migration based on a snapshot and urged decentralized exchanges to pause liquidity pool activities involving PLA tokens. As a consequence of the exploit, PLA’s value has plummeted by more than 18%, dropping from $0.182 before the attack to $0.148 at the time of writing.