TL;DR Breakdown:
- VeVe has confirmed that its systems have been compromised.
- A large amount of Gems tokens were traded less than the actual value amid the exploit.
- The marketplace is temporarily closed.
Popular app-based marketplace for premium licensed digital collectibles VeVe confirmed in a tweet on Wednesday that its systems were compromised, leading to illegitimate sales of Gems – the platform’s in-app token used for collectibles trading. At the moment, the NFT marketplace is temporarily closed as the team investigates the matter.
VeVe’s Gems exploited
VeVe admitted that they were alerted by the community members, who noticed unusual activity in the marketplace. The team noted that “a large amount of gems” were acquired illegitimately amid the security breach. Although the exact number of Gems hasn’t been disclosed, It’s speculated that at least seven million gems were exploited.
While the investigation is underway, VeVe noted it already restricted some users’ accounts. Some people argued that the restricted accounts are probably those that engaged with the exploited Gems.
It’s worth noting that Marvel entered a partnership with VeVe last year to release its superhero NFT collections.
Exploits mounts in the NFT space?
The incident today now counts as another exploit in the non-fungible token space this month. On 3rd March, the largest NFT marketplace on Arbitrum blockchain Treasure was exploited in a series of transactions. This enabled the hackers to purchase NFTs from the marketplace at zero cost. However, most of the stolen NFTs were returned shortly after the attack.
More recently, a newly-debuted NFT project, Rare Bears, reportedly lost about 179 NFTs to a hacker, who later amassed nearly $800,000 from the stolen NFTs. As Cryptopolitan reported, the hacker somehow managed to hijack Rare Bears’ admin account on Discord, through which he shared a phishing link to users and siphoned their NFTs.
