Fans of the popular new NFT collection Monkey Kingdom were the target of a theft on Tuesday, local media reported. A hacker infiltrated the group chat of the project founded by Hong Kong entrepreneurs, then used a phishing scam to get would-be buyers to share their account information, which enabled the hackers to steal 7,000 Solana, the token the NFTs are built on, worth US$1.3 million.

Fast facts

  • Hackers breached an administrator’s account on the group chat Discord, then posted a phishing link in the chat. The project was about to launch a new round of sales, so eager buyers were susceptible and surrendered key information to their crypto wallets.
  • Launched on Nov. 27, Monkey Kingdom features 2,222 unique digital portraits of Wukong, the Monkey King, saved as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and has become a focus of attention by NFT fans, especially in Asia. At the time of the phishing scam, the project was opening pre-sales of Baepes, a collection of 2,221 digital portraits of female Wukongs. The sale was suspended.
  • Monkey Kingdom announced on twitter it would compensate those who were scammed. “We will reimburse everyone who innocently fell victim to the trap of cyber thieves,” Monkey Kingdom tweeted, adding a link to a form.