Yuga Labs says it has salvaged roughly $570,000 worth of NFTs after an exploit hit pools tied to the now-inactive Floor Protocol on Sunday.
What happened
- Floor Protocol, which let users deposit NFTs into liquidity pools in exchange for fungible μTokens (sometimes called fpTokens) and later burn those tokens to redeem the underlying NFTs, stopped active operations last year — but some pools still held assets.
- An exploit surfaced that turned a small amount of wrapped Ether (wETH) into an effectively near‑infinite μToken balance, enabling an attacker to drain NFTs from affected pools. A follow‑on opportunist then swapped the drained tokens for the underlying NFTs.
Yuga Labs’ intervention
- Yuga’s VP of Blockchain, 0xQuit, says the team discovered the exploit while monitoring Floor Protocol activity and, after deeper review, identified an additional related attack vector that could threaten more pools.
- To prevent further losses, Yuga Labs executed what it describes as a white‑hat rescue: it moved exposed assets out of vulnerable pools before another actor could exploit them.
- The recovered haul includes 29 Bored Apes and two CryptoPunks among other NFTs — about $570,000 in total. Yuga Labs now holds the assets and is working on a plan, in coordination with Floor Protocol developers, to resolve ownership and returns. The company has not said whether original owners have yet received their NFTs back.
Comments from Yuga Labs
- 0xQuit explained the rationale on X (Twitter): once they identified additional attack paths, waiting wasn’t responsible because other attackers could discover and exploit the same routes.
- CEO Michael Figge wrote the move “saved dozens of assets,” prevented market impact, and protected Floor Protocol tokens, framing the operation as a recovery effort to limit further damage.
Why it matters
- The episode underscores that even dormant protocols can carry active smart‑contract risks if liquidity or tokenized claims remain on‑chain.
- It also highlights how rapid, on‑chain monitoring and intervention by major ecosystem players can blunt damage from exploits — though settlement and ownership determinations still require coordination between rescuers and protocol developers.
Market context
- The rescue comes amid a much smaller NFT market than the 2022 boom: Bored Apes once traded for hundreds of thousands of dollars at peak, and Ethereum NFT daily sales then often topped $100 million; in 2026 the highest daily volume reached $32.3 million, illustrating the sector’s shrinkage and continued fragility.
Yuga Labs says it found the exploit Sunday morning and continues to hold the rescued NFTs while working with Floor Protocol’s team on next steps.
Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news
