An unknown attacker exploited the blockchain gaming project Gala Games on May 20, stealing approximately $200 million, according to reports.

Solidity developer 0xquit explained that the attacker minted 5 billion GALA tokens using an admin address, suggesting the culprit could be an external hacker or a rogue insider.

0xquit noted that the attacker could mint an additional 12 billion tokens before hitting a cap. However, since the exploited address is blocklisted, the attacker would need access to another admin address to steal or mint more tokens.

The related transaction can be seen on Etherscan. Gala Games has not yet provided a comment.

Price drop

Molly White of Web3 Is Going Great argued that the actual impact of the attack is lower, as the attacker only managed to swap $21 million worth of GALA tokens to ETH before the address was frozen.

White also noted that the attacker cannot sell the tokens without significantly affecting their price.

Following the incident, the GALA token's price dropped rapidly from $0.048 to $0.038 within two hours, a decline of over 20%. However, it partially recovered to $0.043 by 12:04 am UTC.

Past incidents

Gala Games previously suffered an exploit in November 2021, losing $130 million. In 2023, company founders entered a legal dispute when co-founder Eric Schiermeyer accused fellow co-founder Wright Thurston of the theft.

Additionally, Gala Games experienced a $1 billion exploit by white hat hackers in November 2023. Though the funds were safe, the incident caused concern and impacted GALA prices.

Despite these controversies, the GALA token remains among the 70 largest crypto tokens by market cap, with a total supply valued at $1.56 billion.