Hacker tastes own medicine as community gets back stolen NFTs

Tales of traders getting scammed out of their nonfungible tokens were quite common at the peak of the NFT boom. However, in an interesting turn of events, the Solana community came together to “scam” a scammer in order to get back some stolen NFTs.

It all started with the Discord channel hack of cross-chain gaming development studio Uncharted NFT, where scammers managed to drain 109 user wallets. The scammers got away with 150-plus SOL tokens and 25 World of Solana (WOS) NFTs, including three rare and highly valuable digital collectibles.

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It all began when @UnchainedNFT_ Discord got hacked two days ago.
A hacker drained the wallet of 109 users for a total of 150+ $SOL.
The most affected person was a WOS whale with 25 WOS NFTs that got stolen.
This whale also owned 3 top 100 @MoonRankNFT WOS NFTs ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/R2PWe3gPMX
— World Of Solana {WOSup} (@worldofsolana) May 25, 2022

WOS is a collection of 2,222 unique heroines, with the most expensive avatar currently listed for 123 SOL ($5,600). The current floor price of the collection is 2.03 SOL.

In the aftermath of the hack, the community decided to get back the stolen NFTs. The WOS team got in touch with their development partner, who goes by Cyberfrog on Twitter, and raised royalties on the stolen NFTs to 98% from the default 5%.

The community was asked to keep an eye on the Solana NFT marketplace MagicEden for any new listings. The scammer fell for the trap within two days, and the community managed to buy back 15 NFTs, while the other 10 were sniped.

Sniping is the process of waiting until the last few seconds of an NFT auction to make a winning bid. This strategy is used to prevent other NFT bidders from placing a higher bid before the auction ends.

The community managed to retrieve the other 10 sniped NFTs as well and return the 25 WOS NFTs to the rightful owner.

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Two days later, around 2am EST, the hacker listed the 25 WOS NFTs on @MagicEden.@WorldofSolana community managed to buy 15 and a sniper took the other 10.
We sent a @FamousFoxFed DING to the sniper and he gladly accepted to cooperate. pic.twitter.com/3TCRnnZ4qQ
— World Of Solana {WOSup} (@worldofsolana) May 25, 2022

The Twitter thread detailing the events of the hack and the community work to get them all back also asked community members to “always use a burner wallet and be careful when minting.” The small NFT community has managed to get back at scammers twice now.