Kautuk Kundan, the founder and CEO of Stackr Labs says he hacked Atari’s newest crypto arcade sport — constructed on Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 community Base — to show that its Asteroids sport was not constructed on a blockchain regardless of the claiming to be “on-chain.”
In an Aug. 6 submit to X, Kundan shared that he and his crew at Stackr Labs had sabotaged the leaderboard of Atari’s lately launched Asteroids sport with out taking part in a single sport.
We hacked @base and @atari’s arcade and sabotaged the leaderboard with out taking part in a single sport –
And because of this individuals have belief points with crypto apps ♂️
“On-chain” is turning into a throwaway time period for a majority of shopper tech. As a neighborhood, we must be doing higher than… pic.twitter.com/nAiMPi7cSs
— Kautuk ⟠ (@Kautukkundan) August 5, 2024
“The sport isn’t truly on-chain. When the person begins the sport nothing occurs on-chain, on the finish of the sport if you get a rating, you state that rating and you set in an API name,” Kundan mentioned.
As a substitute of taking part in the sport and incomes a real rating, Kundan mentioned he manipulated the official scoreboard of the sport just by sending “API calls to Web2 servers” — one thing that proves the sport isn’t truly “on-chain” in any respect.
Moreover, he promised that whereas he and his crew had not touched another scores on the leaderboard, he prompt different actors could not have been as noble and will’ve simply manipulated their scores to rank increased on the record.
Atari launched the Asteroids sport in partnership with Coinbase layer-2 Ethereum community Base on July 25, with gamers being supplied the possibility to play the retro arcade sport and climb the leaderboard to win prizes together with a $1,000 Atari present card.
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“Even when the app runs off-chain, it ought to produce commitments which might be on-chain verifiable,” Kundan mentioned.
Kundan used the instance to push one thing referred to as Proof of Gameplay — an Ethereum roll-up system developed by his personal agency Stackr — saying that if video games and merchandise wish to name themselves “on-chain” they need to be verifiable on the blockchain itself.
He reiterated that the hack was not a “adverse call-out” however as an alternative it was an “try to enhance upon, and discover options for persistent issues,” in crypto functions.
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