Polygon NFT marketplace Vulcan Forged hacked, with users losing millions

The Polygon-based NFT marketplace Vulcan Forged was hacked on Monday 12th December, according to an official statement published the following day. In total, 4.5million PYR tokens — native to the platform — were stolen, worth around $140million. This amounts to 23% of all PYR tokens available at the time of writing. These were then sold on a number of crypto exchanges.

As a result, the value of tokens has plummeted, despite almost all impacted users already having been reimbursed. Vulcan Forged has accepted responsibility for the theft, and promised everyone will get their money back. A ‘semi-custodial’ model for controlling each user’s wallet has been blamed. Simply put, this means that the platform itself co-manages every wallet along with the owner, and failed to properly secure them at the Vulcan end.

A new solution is now being rolled out, which will offer fully decentralised wallet management. This should prevent further hacks of this kind. Most importantly, all wallets are now fully secured. All stolen tokens have also been identified, and an investigation now hopes to uncover footprints that could point to those responsible.

Vulcan Forged Hack and PYR Tokens

Although Vulcan Forged is rapidly refunding every user impacted, this situation will do nothing for how robust and safe the platform is perceived. As you would expect, this has translated into a serious suckerpunch for the native PYR token value.

This morning, PYR tokens had tumbled by 26.2% in a 24 hour period. Each token is currently worth $22.3. It’s hard to say what the lasting impact of this will be. However, it does show some recovery from initial losses that saw 34% of token value lost immediately after the hack.

Either way, this wasn’t the early Christmas present the Vulcan Forded team was hoping for. Important to note, too, is the predictions by experts at Wallet Investor. According to these boffins. PYR tokens could do more than recover, and find themselves worth $67.50 each within 12 months. In fact, they go further stil — by 2026 you could be paying $246 a pop.

Why Won’t the Vulcan Forge Hack Ruin the Marketplace?

The Vulcan Forge hack is bad for business, but it’s not the end of the world. For starters, people are and have been reimbursed. This shows the marketplace is more than stable in terms of its own finances.

More so, if we look at what’s on offer there are some answers. Vulcan Forged is the creator of blockchain games ‘Vulcan Verse’, ‘Berserk’, ‘BlockBabies’, ‘Forge Arena’, and ‘Vulcan Chess’. The team also operates an NFT marketplace and decentralised exchange for all gaming tokens. MyForge is the platform’s own wallet service. All of which combines to a pretty substantial business model and one that clearly appeals to many people.

Nevertheless, the hack itself is likely to ring alarm bells in who have already adopted, while those considering dipping into NFTs and crypto might be put off. Not least as, over the course of this year — 12 months in which non-fungibles have become mainstream — we have reported on several incidents of criminality. From the recent phishing scam sent by someone pretending to be NFTTrader,  to the ‘Phantom Galaxies’ Discord hack, to the white hat OpenSea hack.