Kautuk Kundan, the founder and CEO of Stackr Labs, claimed to have hacked Atari’s latest crypto arcade game, built on Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network Base,
to prove that the game was not truly “on-chain.” Kundan’s team sabotaged the leaderboard without playing the game, exposing the misuse of the term “on-chain.”
Points
- Atari’s game claimed to be built on blockchain, but it wasn’t.
- Stackr Labs manipulated the leaderboard without playing.
- The hack aimed to highlight issues with misleading “on-chain” claims.
- Kundan advocated for verifiable on-chain commitments for crypto apps.
- The hack was intended to improve crypto application integrity.
Kautuk Kundan, the founder and CEO of Stackr Labs, has made headlines by claiming to have hacked Atari’s latest crypto arcade game, built on Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network Base, to expose that the game was not genuinely “on-chain.” Kundan shared his team’s actions in an August 6 post on X, revealing that they sabotaged the leaderboard of Atari’s recently launched Asteroids game without playing a single game.
Kautuk ⟠@KautukkundanWe hacked @base and @atari’s arcade and sabotaged the leaderboard without playing a single game – And this is why people have trust issues with crypto apps.
“The game is not actually on-chain. When the user starts the game, nothing happens on-chain; at the end of the game, when you get a score, you state that score and put in an API call,” Kundan explained. Instead of playing the game and earning a genuine score, Kundan said he manipulated the official scoreboard by sending “API calls to Web2 servers,” proving that the game is not truly “on-chain.”
Kundan emphasized that while he and his team had not tampered with any other scores on the leaderboard, he suggested that others might not have been as ethical and could easily manipulate their scores to rank higher on the list. Atari launched the Asteroids game in partnership with Coinbase’s layer-2 Ethereum network Base on July 25, offering players the chance to climb the leaderboard and win prizes, including a $1,000 Atari gift card.
“Even if the app runs off-chain, it should produce commitments that are on-chain verifiable,” Kundan argued. He used this example to push for something called Proof of Gameplay, an Ethereum roll-up system developed by his own firm Stackr. He insisted that if games and products want to call themselves “on-chain,” they should be verifiable on the blockchain itself.
He reiterated that the hack was not intended as a negative call-out but rather an attempt to improve upon and find solutions for persistent problems in crypto applications.
解説
- This incident underscores the importance of transparency and authenticity in crypto applications.
- Misleading claims about “on-chain” functionality can damage trust in the crypto community.
- Verifiable on-chain commitments are crucial for maintaining the integrity of blockchain-based applications.
- The hack serves as a call to action for developers to ensure their apps genuinely leverage blockchain technology.
- Improving crypto application integrity will benefit the entire ecosystem by fostering trust and reliability.