Gala’s $240M Exploit, NYAN Token Launch, ‘Notcoin’ Earning Missions

The crypto and NFT gaming space is busier than ever lately, what with prominent games starting to release, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly constant array of other things happening at all times. It’s a lot to take in!

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. And if you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re happy to present This Week in Crypto Games.

Our weekend roundup serves up the biggest news from the past week, along with a few other tidbits you might have missed. We also showcase a few of our original stories from the week.

Biggest news

Gala Games exploit: The Gala Games ecosystem was attacked last week when an as-yet-unidentified person exploited the Gala smart contract to print and swipe 5 billion GALA tokens, or $240 million worth at the time. After swapping 600 million GALA tokens for ETH via Uniswap, the wallet was frozen—and the next day, the attacker returned the $22 million ETH that they’d managed to get their hands on.

The Gala team decided to exchange the returned Ethereum for GALA tokens before burning them, thus cutting the overall supply. Network operators are now voting to consider the remaining 4.4 billion GALA tokens printed by the attacker as effectively burned, since they’re currently stuck in a frozen wallet.

NYAN token launches: Solana-based hero shooter game Nyan Heroes launched its token on Bybit, early Tuesday. The token popped over $0.46 with $22 million in early volume, and at the time of writing it currently has a market cap of about $21 million according to CoinMarketCap.

Alongside the launch, Bybit hosted a rewards campaign handing out 2.76 million NYAN tokens (about $828,000) to customers that staked NYAN, MNT, or USDT on the exchange. Nyan Heroes developer 9 Lives Interactive also opened up airdrop claims to those who checked out the pre-alpha demo playtests on the Epic Games Store.

Notcoin earning missions: After successfully launching its NOT token to sizable demand, viral Telegram-based clicker game Notcoin launched a new type of in-game mission last week that lets players passively earn crypto rewards, rather than earning one-time rewards.

“Earnings missions” guide players through different communities belonging to “partner projects,” granting them tokens in return for learning about other crypto games and apps. The actual clicker gameplay has yet to return, however, though it’s planned.

ICYMI

• Move-to-earn game Stepn announced the launch of a new social lifestyle game called Stepn Go.
• Pokémon-esque crypto and NFT game Pixelmon announced airdrop details for its soon-to-be-launched MON token.
• Meme coin gambling game Rug.fun is currently under construction as the devs work on version two of the game.
• The Apeiron Guild Wars 2024 esports competition began with $1 million worth of prizes up for grabs.
• Fantasy Top started a 22-day competition with 222,222 Blast Gold as a reward.
• Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) said he bought GameStop stock to “punish predator short selling to the moon”

GG spotlight

Here are a few of our original stories from this past week that we think are well worth a weekend read: