Hackers’ activity in cryptocurrencies continues even now – during the market downturn. For example, in early April fraudsters hacked into the Discord server of a popular NFT community called Bored Ape Yacht Club, which allowed them to get hold of other people’s tokens.

Well over the weekend the victim of the hack was the Twitter account of a famous artist under the pseudonym Beeple, who sold the most expensive NFT token in the world. We wrote about this situation in a separate article.

New feature in MetaMask

According to Asset Reality CEO Aidan Larkin, affected cryptocurrency enthusiasts have rather few refund options. Here’s a relevant quote from a company spokesperson.

Losing cryptocurrencies is a pretty harrowing and humiliating experience. And the number of people who can get scammed even twice is huge.

The options for users in such cases are really limited. Yes, in some cases, centralised exchanges can freeze hackers' addresses or prohibit them from entering coins, but it is almost impossible to return coins specifically. And this peculiarity properly scares newcomers, who fear the potential loss of money and therefore do not risk messing with crypto.

Asset Reality CEO Aidan Larkin

That’s why Larkin is partnering with popular service MetaMask on a new service that could make the process of returning coins faster and more convenient. In addition, the new procedure could significantly increase the chances of getting the money back at all.

According to Decrypt, MetaMask has already announced a plan to connect hacking victims with Asset Reality. This firm can help victims get together and in some cases connect them with lawyers, forensic experts and law enforcement. Here’s a cue.

Victims of fraud often find it difficult to get sufficient resources and attention from law enforcement. Asset Reality’s proposal allows several victims of fraud to join forces and conduct a larger forensic investigation against the fraudsters. Asset Reality will relieve users of the hard work of investigating each fraudulent transaction.

Amount of stolen funds by different areas of the crypto market between 2019 and 2021

MetaMask security expert Alex Herman said the partnership was formed after the platform’s head of operations Jacob Kantele became frustrated with existing lost cryptocurrency recovery services, which he believes are largely “empty”. Here’s Herman’s rejoinder.

We wanted to be a guide in this field. MetaMask is paying for this as a service to our users. We’ll pay for a better level of investigation.

In practice, this involves creating a new section on MetaMask’s website where users will be asked to report lost funds and provide details on how the hack happened. In response, Asset Reality will contact them and, in some cases, help take steps to recover the funds.

In general, both ordinary users and celebrities can fall victim to cryptojackers. For example, earlier actor Seth Green admitted to being a victim of a phishing attack, which cost him the loss of his expensive NFT token APE #8398 from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. Luckily, in Seth’s case the story got a happy ending: the actor managed to get in touch with a crypto-enthusiast under the nickname DarkWing84, who turned out to be the buyer of the token after it was stolen by an intruder.

Actor Seth Green

The scammer also took possession of two other NFTs from the Mutant Ape Yacht Club series and one Doodle #7546 token worth around 60 ETH, which exceeds a hundred thousand dollars. All four tokens were put up for sale on the OpenSea platform for unsuspecting collectors, reports CryptoSlate. In total, the attacker managed to snag around 164 ETH in profits, which were later transferred via the decentralised 1inch platform within 24 hours. This was probably done to obfuscate the transaction trail.

APE #8398

Green later tweeted that he had contacted DarkWing84 after someone informed him that the crypto-enthusiast had been trying to reach him via Discord for a long time. Now that Green and DarkWing84 have made contact, it is likely that NFT will be returned to its rightful owner.


We believe that this initiative will have a good impact on the future of the cryptocurrency industry and its popularity among newcomers. Of course, blockchain transactions will still be final and without the possibility of reversal, but the prospect of dealing with lawyers may scare some hackers. In addition, newcomers will feel a certain protection and know about the possibility of recovering lost money - at least in theory.