I want to make a disclaimer first. I am not very active inside the GLS community but I am one of the top 100 GLX stakers and I have been invested from very early on. This post will not be without a vengeful tone since this has affected me and my portfolio. I was sick the last 10 days, otherwise this post would have come earlier.
A few weeks ago a number of top GLS investors colluded to steal north of 250k USD from the GLS game by using an exploit in one of the game systems. This is the biggest theft on Hive since Justin Sun.
The damage done goes far beyond the initial 250k and will increase over time since the exploiters bought game assets that earn them further GLX from the airdrop by holding those assets.
Its compounded theft!
Its like robbing a bank and then putting the cash you stole into a savings account in that same bank to get APR. Batshit crazy stuff.
They damaged everyone elses investment, increased their future influence on the game and reduced investor trust. While the market was moving up, the GLX price dropped by 50%.
EXPLANATION of what happened:
Top investors in a brand new platform that has no game or products yet, had a goal to manipulate the price of GLX and push it up significantly for 5 minutes to take advantage of the 5 minute average burn mechanic of GLX -> GLUSD. (Has been changed since)
With their goal in mind they bought up significant amounts of GLX over the course of a week. The price went up a bit.
Then after their bags were stuffed with liquid GLX they pumped the GLX price 4x higher and held it there for 5-10 minutes, so that they could unload newly acquired bags of GLX and lock in huge profits by burning the GLX for GLUSD. The pump allowed for up to 4x more GLUSD as they would have normally received.
@oliverschmid ended up with over $80,000 GLUSD. (equivalent to 80k USD)
The others involved, chose to buy 1000's of GLSPA packs, diluting the airdrop for packs for all the other players. (This improved their relative position at the expense of others)
In all, hundreds of thousands of $GLUSD was acquired by the crew @genepoolchlrn8r organized in that 5-10 minute window they created at a orchestrated discount reaching as high as 75% off.
Curtesy of Gank. @yabapmatt has confirmed that the exploit originated from the burning mechanic.
Exploits exist and can happen in early projects that are yet to even deliver a product. GLS is that type of project. If Aggroed and Matt havent proven themselves with Splinterlands already, this wasnt a relatively small amount stolen compared to the game size (still massive), or if any other team was behind the project, this might have killed the project before it got anywhere.
Even if the system was poorly designed, which does happen in new projects, it does not give individuals the right to exploit it for personal gain! The act of exploiting a vulnerability in a system to commit theft is typically considered illegal and can result in criminal charges.
The people behind this heist think that because you forget to lock the door of your house they have the right to rob you.
Code is law, right?
Well, if code is law and its all that matters, I guess they wont mind if their reputation is that of being dirtbags, scammers, conspirators and generally despicable characters.
These people are still active in the GLS community since they feel safe holding significant positions and being whales. Even more so after taking advantage of the exploit and further increasing their positions.
Their assets dumped would affect prices. Does that mean I give them a pass?
FUCK NO!
Here are the names of the fuckertons responsible for this fuckerific fuckery:
@oliverschmid
@genepoolchlrn8r
@josieb
@skipples
@michiel87
@lostintime
@mastersporta
If I find more were involved, ill update the list as I go. Please provide the names if you have them. Very much seems from reading their responses that the first two organized this heist.
I dont know how Blacklists work on Hive but if there was ever a justified reason to put anyone on it, its this. This is definitely worse than $0.03 selfvotes.
The community should be warned when dealing with these characters.
We got rid of Justins, Neds, but there are still snakes in the grass ready to pounce at the first opportunity.
At this point in time @genepoolchlrn8r has returned about 25k USD and apologized poorly, not admitting to what he actually did. This guy held a community leader position. Good lord.🤦♂
As far as I can see @oliverschmid has not returned anything, has dumped his heist coins and is active in the discord chat cynically laughing at the people pointing out his actions.
Lets give them some love they deserve. If possible they should be added to a blacklist and all their future posts zeroed for rewards. I never advocate for downvotes but thieves should not benefit from the Hive reward pool.