Gala Games received approximately $22 million worth of Ethereum from the individual responsible for the security incident on May 20, when $200 million worth of Gala tokens were minted and a small portion was sold before the wallet was frozen. On May 21, the attacker returned 5913.2 Ethereum worth $22.3 million; this amount was close to the market value of the 600 million GALA tokens sold the previous day.
What is Happening at Gala?
In a blog post dated May 21, the Gala team stated that the return of Ethereum came after the team's quick, effective response and the involvement of federal law enforcement. Gala mentioned that they used a new GalaChain block list protocol feature to effectively freeze 4.4 billion GALA tokens out of the 5 billion GALA tokens minted within 45 minutes.
Gala's co-founder and CEO Eric Schiermeyer stated in a May 20 X and Discord post that the identity of the alleged attacker, including their home address, had been identified. Gala Games has not publicly confirmed the identity or method of the exploit, but some community members claim that Gala said the attack was carried out by a security contractor who made a mistake after connecting to the wallet without a VPN.
Notable Statements from the Gala Team
Schiermeyer mentioned in a Discord post that the team would likely use the recovered Ethereum to buy back and burn an equivalent amount of GALA tokens. Schiermeyer shared the following statements:
"I don't see anything else we need to do with the Ethereum. We will probably buy and burn through Galaswap."
Meanwhile, Gala Games suggested in the blog post that a governance vote was being conducted to decide whether the blocked 4.4 billion GALA tokens should be considered burned. This development came after DWF Labs announced that they had purchased 28 million GALA tokens on the open market to stabilize the token's value, stating that their investments and community security were important to them. According to CoinGecko, #GALA reached $0.043 with a 0.4% increase in 24 hours and a 9.3% rise over the past seven days.