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BAYC & OtherSide Discords Breached; Estimated Loss Of $360K

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Some of NFT’s biggest names- Bored Ape Yacht Club or BAYC & OtherSide discords servers were compromised, leading to a loss of around 200 ETH or $360000 in total. Yuga Labs, the creator firm behind the projects confirmed the exploit via Twitter adding that it is actively investigating the incident.

It all started when the project’s community manager, Boris Vagner‘s Discord account got hacked. The bad actor took advantage of the breached profile and posted phishing links in both the official BAYC and its related metaverse project called Otherside’s Discord channels.

According to reports, the hacker managed to take away 32 NFTs including one Bored Ape, two Mutant Apes, and five Otherside Deeds.

Hackers have targeted Discord Inc. groups in order to get users to click on malicious links. Previously covered by TronWeekly, on May 25, 2020, a Moonbirds NFT owner lost 29 of these Ethereum-based tokens in phishing fraud.

The stolen NFTs were valued at roughly $1.5 million. But the most recent high-profile case of impersonation fraud has been that of Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, a digital artist and popular NFT developer whose Twitter account was hacked by scammers to post a phishing scam.

BAYC hack detailed analysis

Co-founder of Yuga Labs Gorden Goner tweeted that “We took accountability with our tweet from BAYC. We are directly working with those impacted.” He then blamed instant messaging platform Discord saying it was time for a “better platform that puts security first”.

In response, a user ask him to stop blaming Discord and accused the team of being complacent, as “this could have been prevented”.

Some vented out their frustration by calling the exploit “Ponzi of the century”.

One Twitter user wrote– ” Probably a rogue team member or a team member didn’t have 2FA [ Two-factor authentication] enabled and got phished or hacked individually. the entire team from mods and up should be required 2FA by default though, especially in the BAYC server.”

Another commented in the replies that 2FA can easily be bypassed and is somewhat pointless on Discord. That being said, one can check OxRebels’s post-mortem technical report detailing how the 2FA Discord Announcements Bot might help minimize the repeat of such attacks.

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29 Moonbird NFTs Worth $1.5M Succumbs To A Phishing Attack

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A Moonbirds owner lost 29 of these Ethereum-based NFTs in what appeared to be a phishing hack. As shared by Cirrus via tweet, the stolen nonfungible tokens [NFTs] were valued at nearly $1.5 million and occurred due to clicking on a bad link provided by the attacker.

For those unfamiliar, Moonbirds is an Ethereum NFT collection comprising over 10,000 profile pictures. Holders gain access to the ‘PROOF community’, and can “nest” their NFT owls for future benefits.

Twitter user and NFT enthusiast Andeh, posted that the P2P transaction was used by the alleged scammer. In the thread, he claimed to have made contact with the victim and has been able to track down the bad actor’s address and name.

Andeh also said that the attacker is a seasoned criminal and has been involved in many scams in the past.

While the official Moonbird Twitter handle is yet to respond, it’s still unclear how many victims were affected by the theft.

The latest incident comes after NFT creator Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, had his Twitter account compromised in a phishing attack.

As reported by TronWeekly, the scam earned the attacker $438K in cryptocurrency and NFTs from the hacked Beeple account.

What are Moonbirds Nfts?

Moonbirds NFTs come with a pixelated owl character with randomized traits and features. In a nutshell, it’s similar to the famous Bored Apes and many, many other profile picture projects on the market right now.

Also like the Bored Apes, Moonbird holders have intellectual property rights and can use their owned image to create products, services, merchandise, and more. They also have access to a private community called the PROOF Collective.

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The PROOF Collective is an NFT-based membership club created by Kevin Rose, who is a tech founder.

In December 2021, PROOF released the 1,000 access pass NFTs via a Dutch Auction format, starting at just 5 ETH. The price of these quickly accelerated since then. At press time, MOONBIRD’s value is trading at $47k, data from CoinGecko showed.

Besides that PROOF plans to host an NFT conference in 2023, as well as release additional NFTs in the future.

Mint Price of Popular NFTs Including Otherside Plummet

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Floor prices for several of the most popular NFT collections, including the top-traded Otherdeed for Otherside metaverse land, are falling to their lowest levels in over a week.

As more big collections are hit, the disputed Otherdeed for Otherside nonfungible token (NFT) floor price has plummeted below its mint price to 2.45 Ether (ETH), worth roughly $5,713 at the time of writing.

Yuga Labs’ Otherdeed for Otherside collection, which included the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection, was a much-anticipated NFT mint for their planned metaverse platform.

Top NFTs show evident price drop

The excitement around the new mint appears to have worn off, as the collection’s floor price fell to 2.45 ETH before stabilizing, according to NFT market NFTGo. At the time of debut, each Otherside land cost around 2.9 ETH.

Since Wednesday, when it was hovering at 3.5 ETH, which was worth over $10,000, the floor price has been falling.

Otherdeed generated a commotion in the market when it choked the ETH network and drove gas prices to absurdly high levels during its mint day, prompting Yuga Labs to concede there was a problem and refund all rejected transactions’ gas fees.

In addition to Yuga’s Otherdeed collection, the floor price of the omnipresent BAYC collection has plummeted in the last seven days. The BAYC floor price has plummeted by 15% to 91 ETH since Wednesday. While this still amounts to around $212,000, it is about $100,000 less than it was a week ago.

Azuki, the anime-inspired art NFTs, is another prominent collection that has had its floor price decline. Azuki’s floor price has dropped by more than half since May 4, from 30.5 ETH to 15 ETH.

On the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, BAYC, Otherdeed, and Azuki are all trading among the top 10 collections.

Sluggish sales volumes throughout the whole non-fungible tokens market may be the main reason for the reduction in floor pricing. Up until Monday, the seven-day volume for Non-fungible tokens had been steadily declining.

On the other hand, the market has had a roughly equal and opposite reaction in the last 24 hours. According to NFTGo, sales volume has increased by 32% since Monday.

Otherdeeds’ 24-hour sales volume is up 52 percent, BAYC’s is up 30.5 percent, and Azuki’s is up a staggering 1802 percent by collection. The decreased ETH prices likely indicate a bargain for the collectors.

Elon Musk Trolls NFT amidst Otherdeeds’ Buying Frenzy Fizzling Out

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Elon Musk appears to take a potshot at NFT by saying “dunno seems kinda fungible,” in a tweet on 4th May. The tech billionaire changed his Twitter profile picture to an image featuring various avatars from the Bored Ape non-fungible token collection.

Due to this, the token price of the digital project soared briefly. ApeCoin, the token launched by Bored Ape creators Yuga Labs, surged 19% in an hour at around 8 a.m. ET to a daily high of $17.5 following Musk’s profile image change.

The price has since retraced back and at press time trading at about $15.44. It’s not known exactly if Musk actually bought a Bored Ape NFT. Nevertheless, the billionaire liked a tweet from Michael Bouhanna, an executive at auction house Sotheby’s.

Bouhanna reacted to his new profile pic and offered to send him”the original file minted with the buyer’s approval.”

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29 Moonbird NFTs Worth $1.5M Succumbs To A Phishing Attack 3

Looks like Musk might have simply right-clicked and saved the picture to make it his profile image. Or this could mean something else. Who Knows! given that the celebratory “Meme Lord” is well known for his Twitter musings.

The tweet comes at a time when BAYC’S Otherdeeds Nft sparked a buying frenzy last weekend that led to skyrocketing gas fees on Ethereum.

NFTs are losing their sheen?

Yuga Labs, the creator of the popular Bored Apes Yacht Club collections, netted roughly $320 million on Saturday from the launch, making it the biggest sale of its kind. Each buyer paid $5,800 per NFT, plus as much as $6,000 in transaction costs or “gas fees”

Once the initial euphoria subsided, prices dropped like hot potato! prompting backlash from the Twitter community, with some accusing the sale of being botched.

According to DappRadar, trading volume for Otherdeeds shed by 68% on Tuesday from a day earlier, despite it being the most traded NFT collection over a 24-hour window.

The NFT market is known for its extreme volatility and has struggled to maintain momentum in secondary markets, and sometimes, in primary markets as well.

One in three NFT collections, on average, have little to no trading activity, according to blockchain analytics firm Nansen. Another third is trading below the amount it cost issuers to mint the tokens. 

Ethereum crumbles as Otherside NFTs sell for a record-breaking $317M

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Ethereum [ETH] buckled under pressure during the record-shattering sale of Otherdeed non-fungible tokens [NFTs] on Yuga labs’s new project, the Otherside metaverse. As the world’s largest NFT mint unfolded, ETH gas prices surge to 8000 Gwei, data from Etherscan block explorer showed.

For the record, Otherdeed NFTs could be minted only in APE, it also required ETH for gas fees. The minting mechanics set by Yuga Labs intended the sale of NFTs in phases keeping note of the gas price. However, that didnt go smoothly as anticipated.

Chaos soon descended where Ethereum users tried to buy NFTs at the same time and outbid each other by using the network’s transaction fees.

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That caused the fees on the blockchain to spike to unprecedented levels, in addition to users experiencing failed transactions due to blockchain bottlenecks.

High mint fees caused many to complain they were unable to make purchases.

Ethereum’s high gas fees act as spoiler

Yuga Labs then took to Twitter saying that the Otherside metaverse may be looking to migrate away from Ethereum to its own Layer 1 blockchain to improve scalability.

“We’re sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while. It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale.”

For those that lost their ETH holdings in gas due to failed transactions, Yuga Labs has promised to refund the gas amount back to the users.

The mint price cost 305 ApeCoin, worth nearly $5,800 at the time of mint. It raked in 16.7 million ApeCoin [$317 million], making it a all-time largest NFT mint.

For those unfamiliar, a mint is a public offering in which NFTs are sold through a smart contract on a blockchain like Ethereum.

Todays’s event highlighted Ethereum’s exorbitant gas fees which have been a long-standing concern among the community.

The Ethereum serenity upgrade is currently in the second phase, which includes a number of activities, including migrating to a PoS protocol and sharding chains. Once these two upgrades are completed, the ETH’s chain speed is expected to increase drastically, and bring down the gas fee significantly.

BAYC Instagram Comes To A Halt After A $1M Exploit: More Details

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Bored Ape Yacht Club or BAYC came under attack by a malicious actor who stole NFTs worth millions of dollars after compromising the official Instagram account of the acclaimed NFT collection. Sources revealed that hacker/s employed a phishing link that transferred tokens out of users’ crypto wallets.

Disclosing via Twitter in the early hours of 25th April, the platform announced by saying, “The hacker posted a fraudulent link to a copycat of the BAYC website with a fake Airdrop, where users were prompted to sign a ‘safe transfer from’ transaction. This transferred their assets to the scammer’s wallet.”

A screenshot shared by one Twitter user depicted an OpenSea page of the hacker’s account receiving more than a dozen NFTs from the Bored Ape, Mutant Ape, and Bored Ape Kennel Club projects — all likely stolen from users who connected their wallets after clicking on the phishing link.

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As of now, the profile page tied to the hacker’s wallet address was no longer visible on OpenSea. Head of communications at OpenSea Allie Mack confirmed that the hacker’s account had been blacklisted from the platform.

BAYC Hack is more complicated than it seems

Due to the decentralized nature of NFT, the contents of the hacker’s wallet can still be viewed on other platforms like in Rarible, the wallet had 134 NFTs, among them four Bored Apes made by Yuga Labs, the creators of BAYC such as Mutant Apes and Bored Ape Kennel Club.

Still, it remains a mystery how the hacker was able to hijack the project’s Instagram account. As per a statement posted on Twitter, Yuga Labs said that two-factor authentication was active at the time of the attack and that the security of the Instagram account followed best practices.

Yuga Labs also said that the team was actively working to establish contact with affected users.

That said, it is generally advised that holders of NFT should never connect their wallets to an unknown or untrusted third party.

Seeing that the phishing link was sent via the official BAYC social media account, made the victims believe that it was legitimate and thus were tricked into clicking the fraudulent link,

Luxury Jewellery Brand Tiffany & Co. Acquires Okapi NFTs For 115 ETH

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American Luxury Jewellery Brand Tiffany & Co. announced its foray into the NFT space via a tweet shared on 26 March. There, the New York-based retailer mentioned that it has acquired Okapi NFT from Rocket Factory, an NFT series, marking its entry into the digital collectibles world.

Data from OpenSea revealed Okapi NFTs were sold for 115 ETH which is around $358807 on March 21. At present, Tiffany has replaced the Twitter avatar with this NFT.

As per sources, American artist Tom Sachs launched the rocket Factory in August last year. The rocket consists of three components NFTs: head, trunk, and tail. These can be combined together to make a complete rocket. The upper limit of complete rockets is 1,000 and the floor price of the pieces stands out at 2.33 ETH.

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After the NFT is purchased, the team first builds a physical version of the rocket and launches it into the sky. Documenting the launch moment with video footage, the team delivers the physical rocket along with the video content to the person who bought the NFT after the launch. 

Artist Tom Sachs has come forward with the space-themed exhibitions he held in different regions under the name of “Space Program”. 

In a statement released by Tiffany and co, it stated that they were excited to continue their long-standing partnership with Tom Sachs. In the post, Tom Sachs’ longtime partner also emphasized that he produced art around his brand and the future of fine art collectors is here. 

How Luxury brands are embracing the Virtual trend

NFTs are undoubtedly the newest means to flaunt the social status of many luxury shoppers. In the realm of high-end brands, exclusivity is much sought after, and NFTs precisely provide that.

A few days ago Polygon Studios, the gaming arm of the Polygon blockchain, Italian luxury pioneer Bulgari has launched its NFT collection on the blockchain. Inspired by the world’s thinnest mechanical watch-Octo Finissimo Ultra watch, is the Octo Finissimo Ultra NFT.

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That being said, the discussion and utilization of NFTs are inevitable these days, and these ongoing digital projects prove that fashion NFT is certainly not going anywhere anytime soon.

First-Ever NFT Cricket Game Debuts On GuardianLink

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NFT finally made its way into one of the world’s most popular sports. Recently, Chennai-based decentralized launchpad GuardianLink has rolled out a play-to-earn [P2E] NFT cricket game which is the first of its kind for the sport. For a cricket frenzy nation like India, there could not be a better tribute.

Sources revealed that the newly launched product is a multiplayer game that would go live in the first quarter of FY23. The firm expects it to garner a positive response from cricket buffs all over the world.

Jump Trade, which is GuardianLink’s NFT marketplace is hosting the game. As per the post, supporters and interested buyers can join the waitlist, with registrations open for the next 27 days. Currently, the website is offering users a chance to win a “premium NFT collection” and “unlock exclusive items.

Founded in 2016, GuardianLink is credited with fuelling 45 NFT exchanges, launching 40 crypto tokens, and generating a market capitalization of $3 billion through operations in 30 countries. Speaking on the launch Ramkumar Subramaniam, co-founder, and CEO of GuardianLink stated,

Watching cricket in India has always been a treat for every buff, especially nowadays, with the new formats. We consider this the best time to announce the launch of India’s pioneering NFT cricket game, which will serve as a unique product for every cricket enthusiast.

The exec also said that GuardianLink plans to create the first Indian metaverse dedicated to cricket. The game will let users choose between two playing modes “which could be pure entertainment or earning a passive income,” he explained.

NFT Start-Up Gets A Major Backing

Even as the Indian cricket ecosystem slowly wakes up to the world of non-fungible tokens, one of football‘s biggest names Cristiano Ronaldo has already thrown his weight behind an Indian NFT startup. Ronaldo-led CR7, in association with several leading global investors, has poured funds worth $100 million in FanCraze.

The Series A funding round is touted to be one of the largest-ever funding rounds in the digital token space in Asia. Besides that, FanCraze has sealed a partnership with Cricket’s official governing body, ICC to build exclusive non-fungible tokens.

Spotify Looks to Integrate NFTs

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Spotify, the Swedish streaming powerhouse, plans to integrate blockchain and NFTs into its services, much to the delight of musicians whose profits might be significantly boosted.

According to recent job listings, Spotify is looking for someone to work on Web 3.0, a decentralized version of the internet based on blockchain technology.

One job posting suggests an exploratory excursion towards Web 3.0, with the possible engineering recruit joining an “experimental growth” group tasked with “driving growth through…Web 3.0.”

Another job posting is for a manager to join Spotify’s “Innovation and Market Intelligence” division. The company is looking for someone with “content, creator, media, web3, and new technology sectors” expertise to effectively define the scale of ambitious initiatives.

Spotify to soon join the NFT bandwagon

Following Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s revelation earlier this week, Instagram will soon be introducing NFT functionality to its platform.

Spotify has joined the list of prominent technological businesses dabbling in Web3 and NFTs.

Limewire, the ancient peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing platform, announced that it would be returning as an NFT marketplace earlier this month. It seeks to become “a more mature platform” after being acquired by TRON inventor Justin Sun in 2018.

The amount of NFTs transacted has begun to decline in 2022, causing crypto experts to predict that music will be the next lucrative vehicle for NFTs, whether through the sale of digital records or the provision of unique privileges at live performances.

Spotify has dabbled in cryptocurrencies before as an early collaborator in Facebook’s now-defunct Diem cryptocurrency project.

The idea was to pay artists directly via blockchain and cryptocurrencies, even if they didn’t have access to bank accounts.

Integrating NFTs and music will revolutionize the music industry. Identifying the true potential of NFTs, music labels and artists are diving into the world of crypto and NFTs.

NFTs aren’t just another fashionable acronym. NFTs appear to be on the cusp of revolutionizing the music business, based on their value propositions of more fair remuneration, more collabs and remixes, and tried-and-true scarcity arguments.

NFTs must continue to reinvent themselves and evolve aesthetically, much like the performers they support.

Here’s how Micah Johnson’s NFT turned into a lucrative business

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A former professional baseball player turned quickly into an NFT mogul after trying his hands on the digital art industry. Micah Johnson’s NFT art sales fetched a handsome price of $19 million in total according to Cryptoart.com. But how did the two worlds collide?

Johnson was active in the league from 2015 to 2017, and after suffering multiple injuries, he finally bade goodbye to his baseball journey to become a full-time visual artist in 2018. 

In 2019, Johnson while expecting a child, felt a weird urgency to try innovative new ways to sell his art and came across the digital token industry. During that time the space was primarily dominated by white men and Johnson felt like he was ‘something of an anomaly.’ 

Gradually he learned more about NFTs through conversations on Discord and Twitter and then decided to give digital art a try. He sold his first NFT in 2020, an animated portrait of a baseball player titled “.15 Seconds.” 

Johnson NFT ‘Aku’ is a trailblazer in itself

His inspiration for the next subject came from a conversation he overheard where a young boy asked his mother if there are any black astronauts. Johnson then created his now-famous NFT character, Aku—a young Black boy with dreams of being an astronaut who wears an oversized space helmet.

Micah Johnson Aku

The first Aku NFT got sold in February of last year, and he has been a major recurring character in the artist’s work ever since. His next collection titled “Aku: The Moon God Open Edition,” featuring a space helmet character walking through a hallway of art has managed to rake in an impressive $2 million dollars in sales during a 24-hour auction period.

And Aku has since made history as the first NFT character to be optioned by a major production company for film and television. 

In addition to that, Aku is the first such unique digital collectible, astronaut-themed or otherwise, to actually go into space on July 28, 2021. “We sent the Aku file through that channel and allowed Aku to orbit around the Earth once. That was really cool,” Johnson told Fortune.