Yuga Labs

History

2022

Raising $320 million in cryptocurrency for the sale of plots in the metaverse

On April 30, 2022, Yuga Labs, creator of the popular NFT Bored Apes Yacht Club collection, launched the sale of virtual land related to its long-awaited metaverse project, raising about $320 million in cryptocurrency in the largest placement of its kind.

Demand was so strong that the activity associated with the event caused a ripple effect across the Ethereum blockchain, disrupting activity and causing transaction fees to soar.

$3 million NFT kidnapping

On April 26, 2022, it became known that unknown attackers hacked into an Instagram page (the social network is recognized as extremist in Russia, banned and blocked in the Russian Federation) of the well-known collection of non-replaceable tokens (NFT) Bored Ape Yacht Club and published a link to a phishing site, thanks to which they managed to steal NFT users for the fishing rod in the amount of $3 million.

On the Bored Ape Yacht Club page, hackers published an advertisement for free advertising distribution of tokens (the so-called airdrop). In order to get "free cheese," users were asked to follow the link and connect their MetaMask cryptocurrency wallets to the specified wallet. However, instead of gift tokens, victims found that the contents of their wallets had evaporated.

We are actively working to establish contacts with affected users, - said a representative of Yuga Labs, the founder of Bored Ape Yacht Club.

The collection's Instagram account was protected with two-factor authentication, and all security rules were strictly enforced, he said. At the end of April 2022, Yuga Labs, together with Instagram, is trying to figure out how the hack was carried out.

This is the second NFT theft Bored Ape Yacht Club has faced in less than a month. On March 31, the service confirmed that hackers hacked into its Discord server and stole one NFT - Mutant Ape Yacht Club# 8662.

This time, the attackers stole four Bored Apes tokens, six Mutant Apes and three Bored Ape Kennel Club, as well as various other NFTs, the total cost of which is estimated at about $3 million^[1].

Acquisition of CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections

In March 2022, Yuga Labs, creator of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club series of NFT images, announced the acquisition of the CryptoPunks and Meebits series, as well as all rights to them from their creator Larva Labs. Thus, now one company will be responsible for the development and sale of all three series. This transaction is characterized as a merger of the world's largest NFT collections. Read more here.

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