Justin Kan, a co-founder of Twitch and the dude Justin.TV was named for, last week decided to launch a site called Fractal. It was to be a ‘marketplace’ where in-game items could be bought and sold as NFTs. Later, in Fractal’s Discord server, a link appeared advertising a drop of 3,333 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 Fractal’s Discord bot, pointing towards ‘Fractai’, not Fractal. The scammers managed to “sell” 3,294 NFTs before the plug was pulled. There were of course no actual NFTs being sold at all, just money being straight up stolen—over $150,000—though you’d 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 “going to make this right.”
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, it’s 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 “planning to fully compensate these 373 victims,” before adding the extraordinary warning, “We must use our best judgement as there’s no ‘undo button’ in crypto,” 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.