A recent hack on the GALA token that yielded billions of additional tokens has caused a stir in the Gala community. But the Gala team responded quickly and drafted a proposal to upgrade their token contract and balance the token supply. This proposal has already been passed and we should see the new token contract in a few days.
I don’t think this was quite what Gala Games had in mind when they talked about May Mayhem! Earlier this week, someone with admin access to the GALA token contract managed to mint 5 billion fresh new GALA tokens. They then sold a significant portion of those tokens before they were caught and their wallets closed!
At this point it is not entirely clear whether this was an internal hack or a vulnerability in the contract or business process.
This hack resulted in the minting of 5 billion (yes, billion) GALA tokens, of which approximately 600 million were sold, netting the hacker a whopping $20+ million! But while 20 million sounds nice, Gala has already contacted the FBI, DOJ and other similar authorities. So it won’t take long for the hacker to enjoy his ill-gotten gains!
You can read the official announcement from Gala Games about the incident here.
Update: apparently the ETH from the sold tokens has been recovered and is now being converted back into GALA tokens.
No problem! Everthing okay!
To solve this problem, the Gala Games team proposed upgrading their existing GALA token contract. This upgrade will not only make the contract more secure, but will also involve burning approximately 5 billion tokens (the exact same number minted by the hacker), by sending them to a burn address.
The proposal was only open for 24 hours. Voting has already taken place among those who own Gala Games Founder Nodes. Implementation should take place within a few days.
And while the hack was quickly discovered, the bleeding stopped, and a proposed fix was already well on its way to being implemented, this incident highlights some of the problems with what is still a very new and ever-changing landscape of blockchain technology. Not only are smart contract audits an important part of the space, but developers must also ensure adequate security against malicious actors with access to sensitive functions (like creating new tokens!).
And this isn’t the first time Gala has encountered problems with their token. They already had to create a brand new token (Gala v2) due to internal disputes between the team. And while the value of the GALA token has already recovered from this incident, another nosebleed for Gala Games will not help the growth and adoption of their blockchain ecosystem.
But they responded quickly and as far as the average user knows, nothing has really changed.
What are Gala Games?
Gala Games is a production, developer and blockchain ecosystem for web3 gaming. This includes both internal games and partnerships with other developers. Their games include Spider Tanks, Mirandus, Superior, Town Star and many others. They also purchased Ember Entertainment, a mobile games company, and have begun integrating NFTs into their existing portfolio of mobile games.
But Gala involves more than just games. They have launched projects to distribute music and film as NFTs! Gala Games also built their own blockchain. This chain is called GalaChain (formerly GYRI) and will be the future home for all Gala-related apps and games.
Gala is a big believer in distributed ecosystems. And so, to support that concept, they offer user-managed server nodes for both their blockchain and for many of their games. And of course they have their own token GALA, which is available on both the Ethereum network and GalaChian.
Follow them for more information about Gala Games Tweetjoin them Disagreementand visit them website.
