Hackers Attempt to Trick Bored Ape Fans Into Minting Fake NFTs

Hackers “briefly compromised” Bored Ape Yacht Club’s non-fungible token (NFT) collection through chat servers on messaging platform Discord and attempted to trick users into minting fake tokens, Bloomberg reported Friday (April 1).

Minting is the process of taking a digital asset and converting it to a digital file stored on a blockchain. Domain name provider Namecheap tweeted that it had suspended the hackers’ phishing sites soon after users had flagged them, the report stated.

The Bored Apes tokens, which combine cryptocurrencies and blockchain with other creative pursuits, are popular for both retail traders and professional investors, according to the report. The Bored Ape Yacht Club Discord channel remained closed Friday afternoon.

Bored Ape Yacht Club allows users to mint “Ape-inspired NFTs built on the Ethereum blockchain featuring profiles of cartoon primates,” the report stated. Collection creator Yuga Labs didn’t respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

Ethereum token ApeCoin, which is linked to the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, was up about 1.5% to $13.14 in the last 24 hours, according to Coinbase. It dropped briefly after the hack warning before rebounding.

Last week, Bloomberg cited blockchain analytics firm Nansen in noting one in three NFT collections “essentially expired” without much trading activity. Another third of these digital assets have been trading below the amount it costs issuers to mint the tokens.

Read more: 1 in 3 NFT Collections Fail, Blockchain Analysis Shows

Nansen reportedly looked into about 8,400 collections comprised of 19.3 million individual NFTs.

The failed projects have been mounting, and long-time cryptocurrency observers have been reminiscing on the bust of initial coin offerings (ICOs) from 2018. At that time, thousands of digital tokens quickly lost value after regulators warned they were probably unregulated securities.

NFT sales have been ebbing recently, with the 30-day sales volume down 40% from the previous month. OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, has seen its trading volume down by 67% in the past month.