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    What happened to Gala Games? GALA token price crashes amid apparent $2bn hack of P2E platform

    By Raphael Sanis

    Edited by Charlie Mellor


    Updated

    The Gala Games token logo and name appears in red on a background of binary code
    $2bn worth of GALA was redeployed after a bridge malfunction – Photo: Shutterstock

    Gala Games (GALA) is attempting to calm “FUD” (fear, uncertainty and doubt) after what has been described as a multi-billion-dollar exploit.

    The blockchain gamefi company has reassured its community on Twitter that this was just procedure and the price is recovering. But scars have been left and, at the time of writing, GALA was still down 18% over the past seven days.

    GALA to USD

    A bridge malfunction

    The PeckShield blockchain security organisation raised an issue on the PancakeSwap decentralised exchange (DEX) after a single address managed to mint more than $2bn worth of GALA tokens. This sparked fears that the unusual activity was a sign of an exploit or a rug pull.

    However, it was in fact caused by the multi-chain routing protocol pNetwork, which provides infrastructure support for Gala Games and other decentralised finance (DeFi) organisations.

    Specifically, pNetwork created a bridge for GALA, which allowed investors to trade between the Ethereum and BNB Chain.

    But, a vulnerability was recently found in this bridge as the engineers had left a key in the contract. This could allow a malicious attacker to change the controlling address.

    Explaining the vulnerability, a Gala Games Medium post said: “Essentially, the BNB Chain contract was a loaded bomb that could go off at any time if the malicious actor decided to exploit the contract.”

    Gala Games reached out to exchanges, informing them of the situation and asking them to suspend the BEP-20 GALA tokens. But not every exchange decided to act on the information, according to Gala Games.

    XRP/USD

    0.50 Price
    +0.840% 1D Chg, %
    Long position overnight fee -0.0753%
    Short position overnight fee 0.0069%
    Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
    Spread 0.01168

    DOGE/USD

    0.16 Price
    -0.900% 1D Chg, %
    Long position overnight fee -0.0753%
    Short position overnight fee 0.0069%
    Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
    Spread 0.0012872

    BCH/USD

    490.40 Price
    -2.170% 1D Chg, %
    Long position overnight fee -0.0753%
    Short position overnight fee 0.0069%
    Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
    Spread 2.50

    ETH/USD

    3,094.49 Price
    +0.340% 1D Chg, %
    Long position overnight fee -0.0616%
    Short position overnight fee 0.0137%
    Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
    Spread 6.00
    The Medium post continued: “With this knowledge, pNetwork enacted their plan to drain the liquidity pool in order to give it back to the users upon redeployment of the new secured contract.”

    Not only did this stir FUD in the community, but users attempted to take advantage of the price difference between the BNB Chain and Ethereum versions of the GALA token.

    Gala’s response and warning

    Soon after the issue was raised by PeckShield, James Brink, head of blockchain at Gala Games, reassured investors.

    He tweeted: “Everything is fine. The activity you have been seeing on PancakeSwap is pNetwork working to drain the liquidity pool. GALA on ETH is completely unaffected.”

    Both pNetwork and Gala Games’ Brink warned users to halt trading GALA on the PancakeSwap exchange. PNetwork said: 

    “A new pGALA token will be created to replace the old compromised one and airdropped in the coming days to those who had pGALA before the pool was drained. This new token has NOT been issued yet so don’t get scammed – we will share official updates in this thread.”

    Can GALA recover?

    It was set to be a successful month for GALA after the launch of its long-awaited Spider Tanks game. Yet the malfunction has sent the price of GALA tumbling.

    It opened at $0.38 on 3 November and climbed to a high of a fraction over $0.40 that day. However, the “FUD” saw GALA plummet to a low of $0.28, a fall of 42% from its peak that day.

    The gaming token has managed to recoup some of its losses. As of 7 November, it was trading at around $0.34, but was still down 18% over the past week.

    Markets in this article

    GALA/USD
    GALA/USD
    0.04236 USD
    0.00171 +4.260%

    Related topics

    #Cryptocurrency

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