In recent times, the blockchain network has had its fair share of security breaches, with hackers finding their way to cause damage or steal valuable tokens and other virtual assets. As NFTs grow in popularity, hacks targeting NFT trading platforms will also increase.
The NFT marketplace, Treasure, appears to be the latest victim of a massive hacking attack after hackers successfully found their way through a code in the Treasure marketplace to steal hundreds of NFTs, including the Smol Brains and Legions collections.
How It Happens
The Treasure NFT marketplace, hosted on the Ethereum Layer 2, also known as Arbitrum, was the target of hackers who launched a hit on the network on Thursday morning, leading to the carting away of hundreds of valuable NFTs.
The hackers identified a code on the Treasure marketplace that allowed them to acquire listed NFTs by paying a dime for them. Treasure developers immediately froze trading on the market to avert any more damage in reaction to the hacking.
How Treasure Operates
Treasure is one of the leading hubs for NFT trading, and it has its own space in the TreasureDAO NFT environment, which provides it with seamless operation and a dependable platform to trade. In contrast to other NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, Treasure does not use ETH or other stablecoins to buy and sell NFTs; it instead allows users to perform a transaction using its unique MAGIC tokens.
According to PeckShield, a blockchain security firm, it is from the ecosystem’s native currency that the hackers find a loophole to manipulate the price of the listed NFTs on the platform, allowing them to purchase NFTs with zero MAGIC tokens.
PeckShield further estimates that more than a hundred NFTs were stolen from Treasure before the team of developers halted all trading on the platform. The further evaluation shows that one address used by the hackers carted around 17 monkey art NFTs from the Smol Brain collection, valued at over $1.4 million at the time of the hacking activity.
Smol Brains and Legions are the most popular NFT collections traded in the Treasure marketplace, and they appear to have been the target of the hackers from the start.
Market Reactions
As news of the alleged hack filtered out and became public, the price of the native MAGIC token took a downward drop in value, losing about 33% of its value before a slight rebound. Meanwhile, MAGIC is trading at $3.38, indicating a decline of 11% before the hacking event.
However, the management team of TreasureDAO has taken to their community space on Discord to offer their deepest sympathy and support to those affected by the recent exploit. And that TreasureDAO would take all necessary steps to ensure that the missing NFTs are returned to their rightful owners in an open and fair process.
In a rather interesting twist, it is reported that some of the hackers have had a change of heart and have returned the stolen NFTs to their rightful owners.