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Crypto losses from fraud and hacks declined 12% in May — Immunefi

The decline in crypto scams and frauds continued, with only $52 million lost in May compared to $59 million the previous year.

Crypto losses from fraud and hacks declined by 12% year-over-year, according to a May 30 report from blockchain security firm Immunefi. A total of $52 million was lost over the course of the month, down from over $59 million in the same month last year. In addition, the figure represents a 28% decline compared to the amount lost in April.

The report illustrates a continuing trend of declining losses from hacks and fraud in the Web3 industry. In March, Immunefi released a report stating that losses in Q1 2024 declined by 23% over the previous year. In April, CertiK reported that the month had seen its lowest losses ever.

According to the May 30 report from Immunefi, most of the losses came from two individual attacks. The first was a hack of the Web3 gaming protocol Gala Games, which resulted in losses of approximately $21 million. The second was a smart contract exploit against Sonne Finance that led to $20 million in losses. Together, these two attacks represented 78% of total losses for the month.

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Gala Games exploiter returns $22M from GALA token attack

On Monday, an attacker minted $200 million worth of GALA tokens but managed to sell only a portion of them. It’s just been returned.

Gala Games has received around $22 million in Ether (ETH) from the person responsible for a May 20 “security incident” where $200 million worth of Gala (GALA) tokens were minted and a small portion sold before the wallet was frozen.

On May 21, the attacker’s wallet sent back 5913.2 ETH worth $22.3 million — close to the market value of the 600 million GALA they sold a day earlier.

Gala said in a May 21 blog post that the ETH’s return came after the team’s “swift, effective response and the involvement of Federal law enforcement agencies.”

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What is Gala Games and how to buy GALA coin?

Gala Games is a blockchain-based gaming platform enabling players to create, own, and trade in-game assets using cryptocurrencies.

Echoing the momentum of GameFi (gaming and finance) and the great success of Axie Infinity, Gala Games was launched in 2019 to pursue technology development and innovation in play-to-earn (P2E) blockchain gaming. The global market size of blockchain gaming exceeded $4.6 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach around $65.7 billion by 2027, establishing itself as one of the most promising sectors revolutionized by blockchain technology.

Gala Games offers players a plethora of blockchain games that encourage players to gain in-game rewards and earn cryptocurrency and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

For the first time, through the use of NFTs, blockchain games offer players the ability to own in-game items, such as strategic tools, physical accessories and land. All items can be acquired in Gala Games using the GALA native token (GALA). GALA is also used for governance voting and to incentivize node operators.

This article takes readers through an understanding of the Gala ecosystem, how Gala Games works, and what the incentives are for using it.

What is Gala Games (GALA)?

Gala Games is a blockchain gaming platform that participants can use to play, stake and sell assets and compete with one another. The platform uses blockchain technology to secure the network and offers decentralized video games to allow players to have fun while earning rewards like NFT prizes.

Developed on the Ethereum blockchain, Gala Games offers players P2E games, an NFT marketplace, and the possibility to store and distribute music and film products. It relies on a network of distributed user-owned nodes necessary for the platform’s security and to boost its development.

Players and user-owned nodes are rewarded with the GALA ERC-20 token for playing and contributing to the network. It is the necessary currency to participate in the platform’s games, trade NFTs on the marketplace, and cast a governance vote.

How does Gala Games work?

The Gala Games ecosystem offers a multitude of blockchain games developed by in-house developers and external partners, including Ember Entertainment, Kung Fu Factory, Gamedia, Certain Affinity and 22cans. It launched as a platform for users who want to play and have fun rather than a platform that only uses incentives to attract customers.

Gala Network users can enjoy real-time strategy (RTS), multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) and role-playing game (RPG) titles all while being rewarded with the GALA cryptocurrency and NFTs for using the platform.

NFTs represent in-game items, such as weapons, tools and skins, that users actually own and can trade on the Gala Store — also known as its nonfungible marketplace — and OpenSea, one of the world’s largest NFT marketplaces.

Gala Games’ platform was developed on Ethereum; however, the Gala team launched its own blockchain (Project GYRI) in February 2022. Initially permissioned, the Gala blockchain aims to transition to a more decentralized platform for maximum autonomy in the peer-to-peer transfer of value.

One of the features the Gala team promotes is incentivizing players to run their own nodes for an opportunity to earn the GALA cryptocurrency, limited edition NFTs and the chance to contribute to the growth of the ecosystem. To operate their own node, users must buy a license for roughly $100.

Gala Nodes

The Gala Games platform is run by a distributed network of nodes ensuring decentralization rather than a central server controlled by a single entity. These nodes offer their computational resources to contribute to the ecosystem, vote on community proposals, and help guide the network’s development. There are four different types of nodes, as follows:

  • Founder Nodes are necessary to secure the network from fraudulent activities and vote on the project’s development using the GALA cryptocurrency. There are only 50,000 Founder Nodes available that can be purchased from the platform with the GALA token.
  • Game Nodes are specially dedicated gaming servers that can access specific allowances, such as NFTs, the ability to invite other players, etc., in the games they support.
  • Player Nodes are decentralized music players that allow participants to play and share their music as NFTs.
  • Film Nodes, like Player Nodes, are for film experiences and entertainment.

History of Gala Games

The founders of Gala Games are Eric Schiermeyer, Michael McCarthy and Wright Thurston, who launched the project in 2019. Schiermeyer had previously co-founded Zynga, an online gaming platform that developed popular games, such as Farmville, Mafia Wars and many others. Also, McCarthy worked at Zynga as a director before moving on to Gala.

Gala Games entered the market in 2019, and since its launch, Gala has secured some significant partnerships with Flare, Mazer Gaming, Bitrue, Brave, Ember Games and AMC, which helped promote the project and increase its market penetration.

What is GALA used for?

The primary use case for the GALA token is to be a medium of exchange between participants in the Gala Games ecosystem and to purchase digital assets, including NFTs.

The GALA token can be an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token or a BNB Smart Chain-based BEP-20 token and is used in various ways across the Gala platforms. It can be a reward incentive for Founder Node operators or a governance token that allows its owners to vote on the project’s future developments.

It can also be in the form of in-game player rewards and can be used to purchase NFTs from the Gala Store. Users can also spend it to buy a license required to operate a Gala node.

How to buy GALA

While Gala Games has been developed to run mainly on Ethereum, the GALA token can be used on platforms such as Polygon and bridged to the BNB Smart Chain so that users can enjoy better trading fees when transferring value.

Gala’s total supply is approximately 50 billion, and each day, a pre-determined amount of new GALA tokens are distributed to the Founder Nodes and the Gala Games Conservatorship, which is Gala Games’ treasury. The daily issuance is cut in half every year, and in July 2023, it was slightly fewer than 4.3 million tokens.

Players can earn GALA in games, and investors can buy GALA from a number of cryptocurrency providers, including major exchanges such as Kraken and Binance. Kraken offers to trade GALA with the United States dollar and euro only, while Binance provides a broader choice of cryptocurrencies — other than Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) — that can be exchanged with the GALA token. Coinbase only allows you to buy Gala with a Coinbase wallet from a decentralized exchange.

Investors must have an account with their provider of choice and verify their identity to start acquiring GALA; select the currency that will buy the token, click “buy,” and once the transaction has gone through, they can either store the token within the exchange (not recommended) or withdraw it to store it in a private and secure wallet.

Is Gala Games a good investment?

As the blockchain-based gaming industry keeps expanding, it is fair to predict that GameFi will play a significant role in the future of entertainment. In 2021, Gala Games sealed a partnership with crypto investment firm C2 Ventures to form a $100-million fund to invest in advancing the play-to-earn gaming and metaverse markets. Gala Games also received funding from Binance’s Accelerator Fund for its development.

Such funding was a positive outcome for Gala Games investors looking for the project’s reliability, opportunities and innovation. Whether Gala Games is a good investment or not is up to the investor to decide after proper research and assessment. Indeed, from a future perspective, GameFi is a promising branch of finance that uses blockchain technology to leverage security and decentralization, encouraging widespread optimism across the financial world.

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Gala Games founders biff over $130M theft, corporate waste allegations

Gala co-founder Eric Schiermeyer allegedly enriched himself, says his founding peer Wright Thurston, while Schiermeyer says Thurston stole millions.

The co-founders of blockchain gaming platform Gala Games have locked horns in court over two separate lawsuits, one alleging the theft of $130 million worth of Gala (GALA) and the other alleging corporate waste.

On Aug. 31 Gala co-founders Wright Thurston and Eric Schiermeyer, also the firm’s CEO, filed lawsuits against one another in a Utah District Court.

On behalf of Gala, Schiermeyer alleged that in early 2021 Thurston and his investment firm True North United Investments stole around $130 million worth of GALA — a token tied to the Gala Games ecosystem.

Schiermeyer’s suit claims GALA tokens were moved to a wallet under the company’s control but were later moved into 43 other wallets by Thurston who, when confronted about the movements, said he was holding the tokens in secure wallets for Gala.

He later moved the tokens from the wallets and exchanged or sold them in a “complex web of obfuscatory transactions” between September 2022 and May 2023, the suit alleged.

Excerpt from Schiermeyer's suit against Thurston regarding the allegedly stolen GALA. Source: PACER

The suit claimed Thurston later feined knowledge of the alleged token sales but now claims the sold GALA belonged to him — which Schiermeyer’s suit rejected.

Thurston is also alleged to have stolen licenses to run Gala ecosystem nodes which can earn GALA tokens — selling the licenses and keeping the proceeds.

The same day, Thurston’s True North filed a lawsuit against Schiermeyer — similarly on behalf of Gala — claiming he caused Gala to “sell off and waste millions of dollars in company assets” and lent millions of Gala’s funds to himself for personal purchases.

Highlighted excerpt from Thurston’s suit against Schiermeyer claiming the latter used Gala’s assets for personal gain. Source: PACER

Schiermeyer also allegedly created Gala entities in Switzerland and Dubai and made himself the controlling shareholder to pursue business opportunities, according to the lawsuit.

True North claims Schiermeyer operated Gala without input from Thurston — a Gala director — and gave incomplete or incorrect information and corporate records to Thurston “despite repeated requests.”

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Schiermeyer’s suit requested Thurston be removed as a Gala director and seeks various relief and damages payments including the return of the allegedly stolen GALA.

Thurston similarly requested that Schiermeyer be removed from Gala and sought at least $750 million in various damages and relief.

In March, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission sued Thurston, True North and another company he founded called Green United for selling investments in an allegedly fake crypto mining scheme.

Lawyers for Schiermeyer and Thurston were contacted for comment but did not immediately respond.

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GameFi developer Gala Games to launch Web3 poker platform with PokerGO

“Players will soon realize the heightened entertainment that comes with playing poker in an immersive Web3 environment,” said Eric Schiermeyer, founder of Gala Games.

On May 22, GameFi project Gala Games announced that it has partnered with Las Vegas poker streaming platform PokerGO to launch a new Web3 social poker game. Dubbed PokerGO Play, users will have the ability to enhance and upgrade their players in addition to redeeming real-world prizes. PokerGO is scheduled for beta testing in June, with the full release being available later this year.

In May 2022, PokerGO released its 1,326 Genesis nonfungible tokens (NFT) collection representing all of the possible starting hand combinations in Texas Hold’em. The collection has around 52 Ether (ETH) in cumulative volume traded with a floor price of 0.1 ETH. At the time, perks for NFT holders included but weren’t limited to “chances to win cash, memorabilia, and merchandise when their hand appears in winning moments.“ As part of the May 22 announcement, developers wrote:

“PokerGO Genesis NFT holders will receive beneficial status within the game, and the two sides plan to host special events inside the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas.“

Gala is the developer behind a series of Ethereum-based play-to-earn blockchain games. On May 18, Gala developers announced that it had burned over 21 billion Gala (GALA) tokens worth approximately $640 million after the protocol’s v2 airdrop. Previously in Dec. 2021, the decentralized Ethereum online poker platform Virtue Gaming launched a digital poker casino utilizing cryptocurrencies and a play-to-earn model. The platform is backed by World Poker Tour champion and poker celebrity Phil Ivey.

In November 2022, the Gala Games token bridge was exploited via an infinite minting glitch that extracted an estimated $4.5 million from its liquidity pool. The project is currently undergoing a $28 million litigation with pNetwork, the cross-chain interoperability bridge used by Gala Games on the BNB Smart Chain, over the latter’s alleged involvement in the incident.

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