Gala Games has received approximately $22 million in Ether (ETH) from the individual responsible for a “security incident” on May 20. During the incident, $200 million worth of Gala (GALA) tokens were created and a small portion was sold before the wallet was frozen.
On May 21, the attacker’s wallet returned 5913.2 ETH, equivalent to $22.3 million, which is close to the market value of the 600 million GALA tokens sold the previous day. Gala stated in a blog post that the return of the ETH was a result of the team’s quick and effective response, as well as the involvement of Federal law enforcement agencies.
Gala utilized a new feature called the “GalaChain’s blocklist protocol” to effectively freeze 4.4 billion GALA out of the 5 billion tokens that were minted within a span of 45 minutes. Eric Schiermeyer, Gala’s co-founder and CEO, revealed in a post on X and Discord on May 20 that the alleged attacker had been identified, including their home address.
While Gala Games has not publicly confirmed the identity or method of the exploit, some community members speculate that Gala had mentioned the attack was carried out by a security contractor who made a mistake by accessing the wallet without using a VPN.
In response to the incident, Schiermeyer stated in a Discord post that the team is likely to repurchase and burn an equivalent amount of GALA tokens using the returned ETH. He wrote, “I don’t see anything else we should do with the ETH. We will probably buy and burn on galaswap.”
Furthermore, a blog post from Gala Games indicated that a governance vote is underway to determine whether the 4.4 billion blocklisted GALA tokens will be considered “burned.”
In related news, DWF Labs disclosed that it has purchased 28 million GALA tokens in the open market to stabilize the token’s value. The firm emphasized the importance of safeguarding investments and their communities.
According to CoinGecko, GALA has experienced a 0.4% increase in the past 24 hours, bringing its value to $0.043. Over the course of the last seven days, it has risen by 9.3%.