Justin Kan, a co-founder of Twitch and the dude Justin.TV was named for,last week decided to launch a site called Fractal, which would be a âmarketplaceâ where in-game items could be bought and sold as NFTs. Later, in Fractalâs Discord server, a link appeared advertising a drop of 3333 NFTs. You may have guessed what happened next.
As Twitch reporter Zach Bussey has detailed, the message, which appeared legit since it was coming from inside the house, had actually been posted by someone gaining access to Fractalâs Discord bot, and pointed towards Fractai, not Fractal. The scammers managed to âsellâ 3294 NFTs before the plug was pulled. There were of course no actual NFTs being sold at all, just money being straight up stolenâover $150,000âthough youâd be forgiven for wondering what the difference is.
In response, the Fractal team issued a statement acknowledging the breach, along with a promise they are âgoing to make this rightâ.
Dear Fractal community,
Earlier today, approximately 373 of our community members fell victim to a scam posted on our Discord. We are sorry. We are going to make this right.
The hacker made out with ~800 sol (~$150,000) by managing to post a fake mint link in our #announcements channel. With over 100,000 members in our community, itâs quite impressive that the hacker only managed to dupe .3% of our community.
Not sure this is the time to be congratulating yourselves, but go on. Fractal say they are âplanning to fully compensate these 373 victimsâ, before adding the extraordinary warning that âWe must use our best judgement as thereâs no âundo buttonâ in cryptoâ, making the entire post read like a textbook example of showcasing why this is such a shitty space.
Meanwhile Kan issued a short video statement of his own, alongside warnings that this Discord scam had been perpetrated on other NFT communities as well:
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