$150,000 Worth of Solana (SOL) Lost during Fractal Hack

Over the past week, a new platform for NFTs called Fractal was launched by Twitch co-founder Justin Kan. The project was announced earlier in December, which quickly drew the attention of NFT enthusiasts reflected in its Discord server with over 100,000 users. Unfortunately, buyers who were keen on acquiring NFTs from the upcoming platform were greeted with bad news on Tuesday when a scam was set up within the community’s Discord.

The server was hacked and the scammer, who gained access, pretended to be a bot sending a link that was selling NFTs for Fractal. Users who followed the said link then had their shares of Solana (SOL) cleaned out by the time they went to check on their crypto wallets. Approximately $150,000 worth of the aforementioned digital token was lost throughout the duration of the scam.

“Earlier today, approximately 373 of our community members fell victim to a scam posted on our Discord. We are sorry. We are going to make this right,” explained Fractal in a statement issued several hours after they found out about the incident. “The hacker made out with ~800 sol (~$150,000) by managing to post a fake mint link in our #announcements channel. With over 100,000 members in our community, it’s quite impressive that the hacker only managed to dupe .3% of our community.”

“If something doesn’t feel right in crypto, please don’t proceed, even if at first it looks legitimate,” the statement elaborated. “We must use our best judgment as there’s no ‘undo button’ in crypto.”

While the bot was fake, the hacker’s timing was fairly spot-on. Prior to the scam being carried out, the platform’s official Twitter account had hinted that a special airdrop — the process of distributing NFTs to early adopters — would be conducted soon. Of course, this news was also exciting for followers of Fractal which is why they quickly hopped on the link shared on the Discord server.

Nonetheless, both Fractal and Justin Kan have since promised that victims of the scam would be reimbursed. “Our @fractalwagmi server was hacked earlier today. Working on a fix and will refund everyone who lost $,” tweeted Kan.

Sources: The Verge, Eurogamer