Grand Base hack — April 2024

Grand Base was a real-world-asset tokenisation protocol on Coinbase's Base network offering gAssets, tokens tracking shares in large listed technology companies. On 15 April 2024 at 03:01:27 UTC an attacker holding the project's deployer key minted tens of millions of GB tokens, including 22.5 million in a single transaction, and sold them into the protocol's liquidity, converting the proceeds to ether over hundreds of swaps on Aerodrome before bridging to Ethereum.

The published figures diverge. PeckShield first reported roughly 527 ETH, about $1.7 million, bridged out, and later added a further 90 ETH, producing the widely repeated total of about 615 ETH or $2 million. Neptune Mutual's own tracing followed funds through five wallets to a single address holding 808.57 ETH, which it valued at approximately $2.5 million. CertiK confirmed the attacker had taken control of the deployer contracts and minted GB without authorisation.

A Grand Base administrator posted in the project's Telegram channel that an exploit had occurred on its contracts and asked users to remove liquidity immediately, saying the token contract was no longer safe. Staff later said they had traced the attacker's wallets and were in contact with centralised exchanges about freezing funds. No recovery has been reported.

The GB token fell about 99 percent within a day. Because the contract allowed the deployer to mint without any cap, community members questioned whether the incident was a compromise at all rather than an insider action; Molly White's Web3 Is Going Great logged the entry under both hack and rug pull. The team's account of a stolen key has not been independently confirmed and no one has been charged.