Astra Nova attributed the recent plunge of its newly launched RVV token to the hacking of one of its market maker accounts.
“Unfortunately, one of our market maker accounts (belonging to a third-party partner) was compromised, and a malicious actor gained access and began liquidating assets,” the project team stated.
The developers informed exchanges of the incident and are collaborating with on-chain experts to investigate. They noted that the project’s smart contracts and infrastructure have been audited and remain secure.
On October 19, an analyst known as EmberCN reported that the alleged perpetrator sold about 8.6% of the total token supply for 10.2 million USDT. Of this, 8.226 million coins were transferred to Gate and KuCoin exchanges; 2.041 million remain in wallet 0x643.
EmberCN questioned the narrative of token theft.
“What hacker would exchange stolen assets for USDT and just hold them? Moreover, transferring directly to centralized exchanges is foolish. USDT can be frozen, and funds on a CEX are easily traceable. Have you ever seen such a naive hacker?” he wrote.
The Astra Nova team promised to repurchase the volume of tokens affected by the incident. The developers also called on on-chain analysts and Chainalysis specialists to help recover the stolen funds for a 10% reward.
The hacker was offered the chance to return the assets voluntarily — in which case they too would receive 10%.
Astra Nova is a Saudi Arabia-based entertainment ecosystem powered by artificial intelligence. The project employs AI for developing games and applications. Among the company’s products are an eponymous RPG based on Unreal Engine 5, a mini-app in Telegram Deviants: Fight Club, and the comic platform NovaToon.
Earlier, overall losses in the digital asset industry due to hacking attacks in the third quarter decreased by 37% to $509 million.
