LiveArtX Hack

LiveArtX, an NFT art platform, lost control of one of its treasury wallets on 16 October 2022. Someone with the wallet's private key moved 197 unsold NFTs from the Meta-morphic: Seven Treasures collection to 0x5f7848EC0286304DC5FE6497AF4B3C0FeaD6A920 and sold them at ever-lower prices, from 1.15 WETH down to 0.45 ETH. The collection's floor price fell more than 80% within a day.

LiveArtX said it had not separated its operations wallet from the treasury wallet, had no multisig on the treasury, and had shared the private key with more than one team member. According to MistTrack, the attacker sent 7.3 ETH and 22.39 WETH to BitKeep, swapped it to USDT and moved it to a new address. SlowMist puts the loss at about $39,000, against an earlier estimate of $36,743 taken from the wallet.

LiveArtX froze the stolen NFTs, updated the contract to invalidate the compromised key, and later burned the 197 NFTs. Buyers were refunded their purchase price plus 0.02 ETH for gas. Holders who panic-sold below 1.2 ETH before the announcement were paid the difference. LiveArtX also filed a police report in Delaware.