Hacker Gets “Scammed” as Solana Community Gets Back Stolen Collectibles

Stories of investors getting their NFTs (non-fungible tokens) stolen were quite common in recent years. Interestingly enough, the Solana community came together to get back some of their stolen NFTs. It all started when the Discord channel of cross-chain gaming development company Uncharted NFT got hacked and scammers managed to steal funds and NFTs from 109 user wallets. The hackers stole more than 150 SOL tokens and approximately 25 World of Solana (WOS) NFTs, along with three rare and expensive digital collectibles.

WOS is a new collection consisting of 2,222 rare heroines, with the rarest avatar at present listed for 123 SOL, standing at approximately $5,600. At the time of the writing, the floor price of the collection was 2.03 SOL.

Following the hack, the SOL community decided to scam the hacker to get back their stolen NFTs. The WOS team connected with their development partner called Cyberfrog on Twitter and raised the loyalty to 98% from the usual 5%. The SOL community was asked to be mindful of any new listings on Magiceden, Solana’s NFT Marketplace.

The scammer fell for the trap and listed all the 25 stolen NFTs for sale, which resulted in the community buying all the 15 NFTs, while the other 10 were sniped by the community. Sniping is the process of waiting until the last few seconds of an NFT auction to gain the winning bid. This process is used to prevent others from placing a higher bid before the end of the auction. After buying all the NFTs, the community managed to return all the 25 WOS NFT collectibles to their rightful owner.

The Twitter thread highlighting the details of the hack and the community work to get them all back also warned the community members about such scams and asked them “to use a burner wallet and be vigilant when minting.” Until now, the small NFT community managed to steal back from the scammers twice.

NFT Scams are On the Rise!

A member of Proof Collective was the latest victim of a cryptocurrency scam that drained almost 29 highly-valuable Ethereum-based Moonbird collectibles off his wallet. The 29 Moonbird NFTs were worth a whopping $1.5 million or 750 ETH, according to a recent tweet by Cirrus. Back in March, a phishing scam drained over $1 million from the wallets of several verified Twitter users in a fraudulent Apecoin airdrop.

A week ago, the Twitter account of digital and NFT creator Mike Winklemann, also referred to as Beeple, was hacked in a two-phase phishing attack. A fake trading link presumably to a website of the renowned fashion brand Louis Vuitton was shared on his Twitter account aimed at stealing money off the wallets of crypto holders. The first attack drained nearly $73,000 (or 36 ETH), while the second scam in the two-part attack wiped off nearly $125,000 in ETH, $75,000 in WETH, and $166,000 in NFTs. In total, the scammer drained nearly $438,000 in cryptocurrency and NFTs from the compromised Beeple account.

The recent NFT hacks are a cruel reminder for all holders to be vigilant when closing deals with suspicious platforms, and to check if at all they are trustworthy. It’s still uncertain how many investors have been robbed by scammers in the past, but it’s an important reminder that even the most tech-savvy NFT investors need to stay mindful when it comes to such scammers.