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- A Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT holder loses valuable NFTs in a fake swap transaction on a third party service swapkiwi.
- The fake swap left the victim s27 with worthless PNGs while the attackers received BAYC #1584 and two Mutant Ape derivatives, i.e. #13168 and #13169.
- The attacker sold all the NFTs for a price much lower than their floor prices.
A Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT holder loses multiple NFTs from his collection to a scammer. A “bubble gum ape” was also among the lost NFTs. The Bored Ape holder was deceived in a fake swap transaction in which they exchanged valuable pieces for worthless PNGs.
The 0xQuit revealed the details regarding the fake transaction in which the victim “s27” lost two Mutant Ape derivatives, i.e. #13168 and #13169, along with BAYC #1584 to the scammer.
BAYC #1584 is among the 119 bubble gum apes (ape blowing a bubble gum), and according to Rarity Tools, it has a rarity score of 111.99 out of 10,000, meaning that it is not that common.
Through a third-party service dubbed swapkiwi, the victim embarked on the fake swap trade with the scammer. Contrary to leading marketplace OpenSea, third-party platforms such as swapkiwi facilitate direct swaps between collectors, resulting in lower transaction fees.
The attacker traded fake NFTs in exchange for victim s27’s authentic Mutant Apes and Bored Ape. The bad cop used actual images of Bored Apes to generate fake copies and also published them on OpenSea.
The scammer exploited how swapkiwi shows verified NFTs, according to 0xQuit. The checkmark appears inside the image; therefore, the attacker simply took an image of a Bored Ape and embedded a checkmark in it.
0xQuit believes that the checkmark should appear outside the image in order to prevent such scams. Further, he says that the attack could have been prevented if the collection was linked to the NFT’s contract address, making it easy to determine whether the NFT is legitimate.
The exchange left the scammer with NFTs worth around $570,000 while s27 got worthless pictures.
The attacker sold the bubble gum ape at a price much lower than its current floor price of 111 ETH ($382,000) for 98 ETH ($337,000). The stolen Mutant Apes, too, were sold off at prices lower than the floor price for the collection.
Reacting to the incident, swapkiwi has released a statement stating that it is working on improving its platform in order to prevent such attacks in the future.
The attack adds to cases of a high-value NFT owner falling victim to such hacks. While NFT platform’s UI/UX not being upto the mark is to be blamed too. The incident acts as another reminder for the NFT holders and Web3 participants to be mindful of their security.
Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast, with a major in macroeconomics and minor in business statistics. She believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks, and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning. She frequently researches, and posts content on the top altcoins, their theoretical working principles and technical price predictions.
