Akutars, a highly anticipated Ethereum-based NFT project developed by Aku Dreams, which featured the character of a young astronaut, hit a snag after its launch on 22nds April and locked up $34 million due to the faulty code of the smart contract. The pro retired baseball player Micah Johnson founded Aku Dreams and has been selling NFTs since 2020. 

The launch is held in the form of a Dutch auction and contained 15,000 3D avatars NFTs. Akutars defined that the project stipulates the lowest bid would determine the price, and it opened at 3.5 Ethereum (ETH) per NFT. Anyone who paid the higher amount would get a refund, while pass holders were promised to get a 0.5 ETH discount for each NFT they minted.

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Unfortunately, the launch changed into a bad dream as the errors in the codes made the project open to exploits. And a user blocked the withdrawals and refunds while attempting to highlight the vulnerabilities within the project, and he said that the developers of Aku Dreams were aware of the bug before they lifted the block.

While the team behind the project acknowledged the issue, saying;

The exploit in the contract was not done out of malice; the person intended to bring attention to best practices for highly visible projects & novel mechanics. They unblocked the exploit quickly after we dug in and took ownership.

Furthermore, the company announced via tweets that it would fulfill its promise to refund 0.5 ETH to pass holders in a day or two.

Yet the experts had detected the issues of refunds, and the project faced another exploit making the team unable to withdraw ETHs from the smart contract. Aku Dreams lost $34 million in total, locked in a smart contract that creators can’t access forever.

Was Aku Dreams Able To Stop This?

Notably, a security researcher Hasan notified the Aku Dreams about the vulnerabilities of the newly launched project, and the company could have prevented the attack. Similarly, another developer going as  @0xInuarashi figured out that Akutars first need to invest in security and audits by saying that a good software developer knows his value and worth.

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Despite all these happenings, the community of Aku developers still expects the project’s growth, and they have voiced support for the project in this tough time.

The former MLB player, Micah Johnson, apologized to the community of Aku Dreams, saying; 

Im so sorry. Im so sorry to the Aku family. I care so deeply about the Aku family, I let you all down & I’m so sorry. I will continue to build brick by brick, continue to work tirelessly, because without the Aku community, Aku’s nothing We’ve come too far, I cannot stop now.