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AkuDreams dev team locks up $33M due to smart contract bug

April 25, 2022 Coin Telegraph

AkuDreams dev team locks up M due to smart contract bug

Aku

A highly anticipated NFT project has been hit with an exploit and a smart contract bug, causing a disruption to its auction and leaving the team with $33 million unable to be accessed.

The highly anticipated NFT project Akutars was marred by both an exploit and a bug on the weekend causing over 11,500 Ethereum (ETH) worth nearly $33 million to be locked forever within a smart contract, inaccessible even to the development team.

The exploit however, was conducted by someone trying to show a vulnerability in the project and not to steal funds via a hack.

The project went live on Friday April 22 with a Dutch Auction, a type of auction where the price lowers until it receives a bid, with the first bid winning the sale as long as the price is above reserve.

The auction opened at 3.5 Ethereum with only 5,495 of the available 15,000 NFTs up for sale and the smart contract set to refund any bidders who were underbid. Holders of an “Aku Mint Pass” were also given a 0.5 Ethereum discount on each minted NFT.

The $33M Bug

In a April 23 Twitter thread explaining the whopping $33 million bug, 0xInuarashi, a developer of multiple NFT projects explained Akutars' smart contract was coded so that refunds to bidders had to be processed first before the team could withdraw any funds.

The contract had a caveat that a minimum number of bids had to be made before it would allow for the team to withdraw, but the minimum number of bids was set to equal the amount of NFTs available for auction.

Unfortunately, due to some buyers minting multiple NFTs within the same bid, the terms of the contract mean it will never unlock, sealing away the nearly $33 million in Ethereum forever.

Cointelegraph contacted the Akutars team for comment but did not immediately hear back.

The exploit

In a now deleted tweet posted by the Akutars that was shared by DeFi developer foobar, it said that developers reached out to them warning that their contract could be exploited but appeared to shrug them off completely as they labelled the potential exploit a “feature”.

The AkuDreams team pretended that this was a feature, not an exploit, when multiple developers raised concerns prior to mint. Bizarre justifications. pic.twitter.com/cVgEXnnWzF
— foobar (@0xfoobar) April 23, 2022

During the mint an unknown individual executed what’s known as a “griefing contract” which locked the ability of the Akutars contract to process refunds to those underbid. The individual even embedded a message on the blockchain to the Akutars team saying they would stop the contract:

“Well, this was fun, had no intention of actually exploiting this lol. Otherwise I wouldn’t have used Coinbase. Once you guys publicly acknowledge that the exploit exists, I will remove the block immediately.”

Akutars then promptly responded by taking responsibility for the code and suggested that the exploit “was not done out of malice” and the person “intended to bring attention to best practices for highly visible projects.”

Quick Update (will go into more detail asap):

1. The exploit in the contract was not done out of malice; the person intended to bring attention to best practices for highly visible projects & novel mechanics. They unblocked the exploit quickly after we dug in and took ownership
— Aku :: Akutars (@AkuDreams) April 23, 2022

In a tweet on the same day, the project's founder and former pro-baseballer Micah Johnson offered an apology to the community, noting that after letting them down he will "continue to build brick by brick" and work tirelessly to avoid any similar issues moving forward.

The team also said that it will be issuing 0.5 Ethereum refunds to pass holders as well as airdropping the NFT to successful bidders.

The mistakes that were made are no more costly to anyone than myself. I’ve reinvested most everything into building Aku.

& most everything will go back to refunds and we will keep building what we set out to do.

Brick by brick. https://t.co/vQiPbl0Jpl
— Micah Johnson (@Micah_Johnson3) April 23, 2022

In an update posted on Sunday April 24 the team said it had rewritten its minting contract which was then audited by several developers and plans to mint on Monday April 25.

This article has been updated, with the headline changing from "$34M" to "$33M"

Nifty News: Hyundai partners with Meta Kongz, Activision surveys on NFTs, and more

April 18, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Activision survey

Hyundai also gave cryptic clues to a possible Metaverse in line with its earlier concept for robots to bridge the real and virtual worlds to enhance mobility.

South Korean automobile manufacturer Hyundai announced today, April 18th, that it has partnered with the Meta Kongz NFT project to create a limited collection of 30 NFTs launching sometime in May 2022.

Hyundai also created a new Twitter handle @Hyundai_NFT for its NFT-related communications and posted a video showing an animated Meta Kong riding through space in a 1975 Hyundai PONY.

Hyundai x Meta Kongz introduces Hyundai Metamobility universe.

Check out this aweeeesome creature’s breathtaking adventure with Hyundai PONY.@Hyundai_Global @meta_kongz pic.twitter.com/w0iLPHxe5d
— Hyundai_NFT (@Hyundai_NFT) April 17, 2022

Included in the announcement was a teaser for a further “Shooting Star NFT” with a cryptic explanation that it is a “ticket to a whole new world” and might lead to “new NFTs”.

In January, Hyundai shared its “Metamobility” concept, a vision for robotics to be a medium between the real world and the Metaverse so changes users make in the Metaverse are reflected in reality, which “allows people to overcome the physical limitations of movement in time and space.”

As part of its concept vision, Hyundai stated:

“With the metaverse set to become a daily space for people in the future, the company expects the possible emergence of a new type of metaverse platform in which the distinction from reality could disappear, breaking away from the concept of VR as the world knows it today.”

Hyundai continued its concept, hinting at a possible “Hyundai Metamobility universe” a metaverse with the issuance of various NFTs as mobility vehicles.

Activision Blizzard surveys on NFTs and play-to-earn

Activision Blizzard recently sent out a survey to players of its games, asking them to share their interest level in NFTs, along with their thoughts on play-to-earn and Metaverse games.

Twitter user @OTadaka shared a screenshot of the survey conducted by market research firm YouGov which attempted to gauge interest in different categories of “future gaming trends.”

So it seems Blizzard/Activision is trying to see if players are interested in crypto and n.f*t in games. I got a survey from them and it is on the survey. I said very disinterested to them. pic.twitter.com/dIT4bVokDK
— Okage Tadaka BlackLivesMatter StopAsianHate (@OTadaka) April 16, 2022

In January Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, stating at the time that the acquisition would “provide building blocks for the Metaverse,” Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella added that gaming will play a “key role” in developing metaverse platforms.

Health data to be trialed as NFTs

Blockchain services company HashCash Consultants announced on April 16th that it was partnering with an unnamed UK- based company to create NFTs which include information about an individuals' health.

The firms will work with volunteers who will provide their health data, with the intention for it to be made into an NFT so that it can be shared with healthcare providers, a move the company says can be more easily tracked and monetized by the owner.

The release provided an example of how this type of NFT could be tracked and monetized with that of a DNA testing kit company selling its user data to a research firm. The Founder and CEO of HashCash Consultants Raj Chowdhury explained:

“If your genetic data were turned into NFTs, the information is then attached with an inherent feature to be tracked, this would enable you to monitor where your data ends up and track the people who hold the NFT and also figure out if it is being used without permission.”

More Nifty News

Texas and Alabama state securities regulators have sent emergency cease and desist orders to Sand Vegas Casino Club for illegally offering over 11,000 NFTs to raise funds for its Metaverse-based casinos.

The parent company of The Sandbox metaverse, Animoca Brands, has added two video game publishers to its repertoire, enhancing both its motorsport and role-playing blockchain games.

Meanwhile, Louis Vuitton is continuing its Web3 plans with the release of new NFTs as part of its “Louis: The Game” mobile game. The fashion label added new levels and rewards to its app which will randomly reward players with 10 new “profile picture” type tokens.

Coinbase Is Creating a Film Trilogy Featuring Bore Ape Yacht Club NFT Characters

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NeoNexus founder pulls the plug on popular Metaverse NFT project

March 22, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Estimates suggest the metaverse project raised 25,000 SOL at its NFT mints, earning between $2 to $4 million.

The founder of NeoNexus, a Solana-based NFT project, has stated the team is no longer developing the project, blaming the drop in Solana (SOL) prices for the decision.

The project's founder, Jack Shi, took to the official Twitter account for NeoNexus, tweeting at 2 pm UTC on March 21 that it was no longer continuing the “healthy development” of the project, adding they would like to hand it over for the community to develop.

It is with a heavy heart that we must inform you that we can no longer continue healthy development of the NEONEXUS project. We would like to hand over the project to our community, or a community-selected party for takeover if that's feasible / possible.

I'm deeply sorry,
Jack
— neonexus_world (@neonexus_world) March 21, 2022

Estimates suggest that the project raised around 25,000 SOL for its NFT mints, which at today's prices would be worth $2.2 million. With SOL prices climbing to over $150 around the time of the token mints, the project may have made an estimated $3.5 to $4.5 million.

NeoNexus is a Metaverse project, featuring both a planned utility and governance coin, it had sold over 4,000 “property NFTs”, with the project planning to offer a further 6,000 property NFTs, and character, vehicle, and accessory tokens planned for the future. The project currently has over 13,000 members in its Discord channel.

In a post on the project's Discord, Shi wrote that the market conditions were to blame for the team halting development, with the project's funds used to pay wages, tech infrastructure, business fees, and taxes.

“It has been incredibly difficult trying to grow and continue our project in this ecosystem and market conditions where the price of SOL has dropped so much and the activity, volume, and interest in the entirety of the Solana NFT space has decreased.”

Market conditions over the past few months have been choppy, with the price of SOL falling over 50% in 3 months according to data from CoinGecko. It hit a 90 day high of just over $200 in late December and since has steadily fallen to trade around the $80 mark.

Shi added that over 20 staff members of the parent company, Unlock Defi, had been laid off as of the end of March, and asked if a community takeover was possible.

Many commenters have accused the project of committing a “slow-rug”, building up the project only to exit, and take the funds months later.

Damn that’s a huge slow rug
— Keizer166 (@KeizerNFT) March 21, 2022

Pseudonymous crypto scam researcher and writer, “zachxbt”, shared screenshots of tweets Shi made in November, showing the founder sitting in a supercar and boasting of riding in a Lamborghini. Zachxbt used these images to question how the project could raise millions only to run out of funds in a few months.

So this project raised $4m from multiple NFT drops and somehow runs out of the funds after just a few months?

Here’s the founder flexing back in November. https://t.co/NzTyumRyuN pic.twitter.com/i7Y45VSAKD
— zachxbt (@zachxbt) March 21, 2022

Various NFT projects advertised their own offerings when responding to the NeoNexus tweet in an attempt to relieve the losses some investors may have shouldered due to the announcement. Many offered whitelists for upcoming mints to those who responded with “NEONEXUS” on their respective Discord channels.

At the time of writing, the websites for both the NeoNexus project and Unlock Defi were offline. Cointelegraph reached out to Shi and former employees for comment but did not immediately hear back.

NFT project