In just a day, a play-to-earn (P2E) GameFi initiative seemingly deceived its backers, while an exchange powered by Solana (SOL) inadvertently went offline. These incidents underline the inherent risks in the cryptocurrency domain.
Recent data from the blockchain security company PeckShield indicates that the GameFi project, HeroCat, might have performed a so-called “rug pull” on its investors. Over the last week, the project’s token, HeroCat Token (HCT), has plummeted by over 99.9%, as reported by CoinGecko.
According to PeckShield, HCT, built on the Binance Chain, conducted a major sale, transferring roughly USD 151,000 in Binance USD (BUSD) stablecoin. HeroCat has not provided any information or updates about this development.
On a different note, a Solana-powered DeFi initiative faced an unexpected shutdown due to a developer’s error. OptiFi, termed as a “decentralized options exchange,” confirmed that they had inadvertently shut down the project during a regular update session the previous day.
The official Twitter account of the OptiFi project announced, “Due to an oversight, we’ve inadvertently terminated the OptiFi mainnet program, and it’s irretrievable.” The blunder led to a setback of USD 661,000, with the majority being the team’s own funds.
Following this incident, the team conducted a thorough analysis. They shared that their goal was to update the protocol on August 29. However, they had to abort the process as it dragged on longer than anticipated because of network traffic jams. During their review, they identified the formation of a new “buffer” account. This account had already received a transfer of slightly over SOL 17.2 (equivalent to USD 558) from OptiFi.
In a bid to retrieve these tokens, the team decided to halt the OptiFi program momentarily. However, the plan backfired; rather than pausing, the program was deactivated indefinitely.
Addressing their users, the team affirmed, “We pledge to refund all user deposits and will manually reconcile all user transactions based on the PythNetwork oracle at 8 AM UTC on September 2nd.”
