Bad news for the NFT market… The cryptocurrency analyst Elliptic has published a study which estimated the theft of non-fungible tokens between July 2021 and July 2022 at $100 million. environment.
As a reminder, this extremely volatile market saw its sales volume explode at the end of 2021 to reach almost 6 billion dollars in transactions in January 2022. But these digital images, sometimes valued at several hundred thousand euros, have been the target of several spectacular thefts, including that of CryptoPunk #4324 which was then resold for a “small” amount of $490,000.
Well thought out scams that pay off big time
The case of CryptoPunk is far from isolated. These include the theft of Bored Ape from the Yuga Labs collection, estimated at $3 million, that of two CloneXs estimated at $50,000 each, and that of 16 NFTs considered “ Blue Chips (validated), for an amount of $2.1 million.
These figures make you dizzy, especially when you know that this is only the tip of the iceberg and that many thefts related to the world of NFTs have not been identified by the Elliptic report. For example, the game Axie Infinitywhich lets you collect Pokémon-like NFT creatures, was the target of a $500 million theft.
The thefts cited here are the most spectacular, but remember that even small wallets have been victims of these practices. The losses are certainly more moderate, but they nevertheless show the security problems that persist in Web 3.0.
Various methods to recover these precious images
All means are good to monopolize the NFT in circulation. The majority of the thefts were made using phishing techniques, by tricking users into filling out a form with their identifying details. The hackers then connect to the victim’s account and only have to transfer all the NFTs present to another wallet. Once the transaction is completed, there is no going back, and the victim finds himself stripped.
Other hackers use “free NFTs” as bait. Their goal is to write a virtual contract that the victim will approve to receive their free NFT. Only problem, this document also gives access to his entire wallet, and once inside, the hacker can make the transfer.
As a reminder, the figures mentioned in this article represent the estimated valuation at the time of the theft of the NFTs, and not at the time of writing. The NFT market has fallen significantly over the past few months, so this data could be downgraded.
Source : The Guardian
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