Alright folks, tuck into a cup of coffee. The following is my understanding of the events as they transpired, which should ideally bring us all on the same page moving forward.
Part 1: Background
On Friday evening, one of the founders of the Space Yetis project (King Mike) clicked a link that allowed a hacker to gain control of his Discord account. This hacker immediately used that leverage to post a scam mint link in the Discord’s announcement channel, which, unfortunately, a few of our members followed through on. Additionally, key members of the community that had extended permissions were kicked and/or banned from the server before this could be mitigated. The Discord was then locked down and multiple channels were deleted by the hacker.
While this scam mint was taking place, the hacker decided to comb through King Mike’s DM history, and located some conversations with negative implications that put the founders immediately into a bad light. In addition, it was later discovered that the developer wallet’s seed phrase had been passed between the two, giving the hacker access to the project’s funds. 31.1ETH was transferred to the hacker’s wallet, and Tornado Cash was used to anonymously transfer it. With the Discord in shambles and the community angry, Acove and Mike did their best to calm the masses but ultimately ended up stepping back from Discord due to being overwhelmed.
I reached out to Acove to try and understand what happened, as I wasn’t sure if Mike’s Discord was still compromised, and informed him on what he needed to start doing in order to gain control over the situation (a couple of screenshots from this conversation can be seen in NFTLlama’s Twitter post from Saturday). After getting on a call early that evening with Acove, it became apparent that he believed their stepping back as the leadership of the project would be the best move, and we agreed that I would assist in that transition in the meantime. Later that evening, I hosted an AMA on the official Twitter account (scroll back through the tweet history if you’d like to listen, though it’s a bit lengthy) in order to give Acove and Mike an opportunity to tell their side of the story without being interrupted. I informed the community that I would be acting as the new project lead, as agreed between myself, Acove, and Mike, for the foreseeable future with Mike and Acove supporting as advisors in the wings. Following this, many questions were fielded from the community regarding security concerns, development moving forward, impacts to existing partnerships, and how we would begin to recover without any funds in the developer wallet.
Part 2: Damage Control
Immediately after gaining all of the information surrounding the hack and the compromised developer wallet, I initiated a multi-signature Gnosis Safe, and had ownership of the existing Genesis Space Yetis Official collection transferred to that safe, as well as the ERC-721 Space Yetis in the developer wallet, by Acove. Additionally, as the Discord was also compromised, I began setting up a new server with multiple layers of security against malicious bots, raids, and a variety of verification methods to act as a barrier-to-entry to those with ill intent. This server transition period lasted approximately 24 hours as testing was required on the new server in order to ensure minimal risk prior to migration. Furthermore, I was granted shared ownership access to the official OpenSea collection in order to verify all addresses and permissions were consistent. A ticket has been submitted to OpenSea in order to make this ownership transfer permanent for accountability. Lastly (and obviously), I have assumed ownership of the official Space Yetis Twitter.
Part 3: Ownership
The inevitably difficult topic of project ownership; when something like this happens, it’s extremely hard to recover. The community that you spent time building loses their trust in you, and it doesn’t matter how many good things you’ve done, you’re still the one that let them down. As has previously been stated, I took the reins on this project, and I did it because of the “friends I made along the way” (as we all like to joke about). That presence and connection, in addition to my full doxing prior to our most recent AMA, allowed me to almost immediately rebuild a solid trust base within our community.
After things began to settle down, I made time to speak with Acove and Mike. As Acove is focused on university and his job out in the real world, he felt it best that he step down from the project as a team member to focus on developing himself, and support the project moving forward as an unofficial advisor. As this project was originally his hypothetical baby, I’m glad to have him staying involved in that capacity. As far as Mike, he will be remaining on the project as a partner and background contributor moving forward until both the brand is well established, and the community has re-established their trust in him. That said, I will be leading the project through all of the phases of the current roadmap moving forward and maintaining my ownership stake.
Part 4: What comes next?
Considering the fact that the project wallet is now starting from ground zero, secondary royalties will remain at 10% for the foreseeable future. 100% of these proceeds will go back into the project itself in the form of consultation fees, additional art creation, staffing (Community Manager/Full-time Moderators) and development expenses moving forward. The team will at no point withdraw any funds from the project wallet for personal compensation until, at a minimum, the current iteration of the roadmap as defined is completely delivered.
As far as deliverables are concerned, nothing has changed on that front. An official announcement will be posted in the coming days to confirm the launch of our Cyborg Collection which will be vital to success in our future P2E gamification. A proposal regarding the development of the game model whitepaper has been conditionally accepted, as well as a conditional agreement made with an experienced Web3 CPA to review our tokenomics implementation. P2E game development is in preliminary talks with an established team that has experience working on both blockchain-based games, as well as graphical game assets. Additional negotiations are in place with our contracted developer to create a whitelist purchasing platform (using $PLASMA) via our website for allocations we receive through our collaborative efforts. Ideally, this platform will bridge the gap between our Whitepaper being published, and our P2E game being released. Sandbox real estate asset acquisition and Voxel development is temporarily on hold, as development costs for the aforementioned items will require a significant contribution of ongoing royalties as they are received by the project wallet. Upon future availability of funding for Sandbox/Voxel assets, immediate efforts will be made to promptly execute on those deliverables.
Part 5: Moving Forward
In conclusion, I’m excited by the prospects that leading this project presents. The members of the community and holders of the project are the key to its success, and I can say without hesitation that I am nothing short of impressed by the dedication that each and every one of them show.
Build first, hype later.
— couchbrotato (Chris)
