Vulcan Forged (PYR), a platform for decentralized play to earn and DeFi trading, faced a recent exploit affecting 148 compromised wallets based on DappRadar estimates, or 96 private keys as reported by the project. The overall losses of 4.5M PYR, or around $140M, will be reimbursed and the lost assets inactivated, due to the structure of the project that allows for some centralized control of the digital assets.
PYR crashed under $20 after the news of the exploit but recovered to its current levels above $23. PYR touched a record in early 2021 at $46.82 and has spent most of the year in volatile trading and corrections. However, the project is also growing its decentralized ecosystem built on Polygon and Ethereum, with thousands of users on its distributed apps.
Vulcan Forged Wallet as a Service Compromised
The token theft was possible due to wallets generated using the Forge function, which meant a hacker was able to access the credentials and expose private keys.
The project will now only accept decentralized wallets to connect to its distributed apps, where private key generation is more difficult to access. Tainted wallets are always a possibility, though Vulcan Forged added to the risk by having a back door for private key generation.
The wallets also lost ETH and MATIC, as well as any other incidental assets. So far, the Vulcan Forged team has promised to also reimburse the rest of the asset balances.
New Elysium Blockchain in the Works
Vulcan Forged has not stopped its development in a bid to line up among the best metaverse blockchain projects. In the coming days, the Elysium network will be announced, opening the door to new tools for play to earn.
Play to earn and NFT startups are still in flux, with a mix of products on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. But there is also a drive to create a new set of tools tailored to the needs of specific games and ecosystems, potentially migrating some of the assets.
Vulcan Forged carries a Vulcan Marketplace dApp registering more than 11,000 users per day, and more than 9,000 for its play to earn game Berserk: Vulcanites Unleashed. The newest project, Block Babies, is just gaining new players.
