Stars Arena Reopens After Hack

The web3 social finance app, based in Avalanche, was relaunched on Sunday, but trading functionality was temporarily suspended, according to a post on Stars Arena.

On Sunday, the Arena will reopen, but functionality related to trading will not be available. Separate details regarding the resumption of trading will be communicated shortly after the relaunch, according to a post on X.com by the SocialFi protocol.

The application is operational, but the trading functionality will not be restored until it is audited. Stars Arena stated in a subsequent post, “Trading will resume only after the full audit has been published and the contract has been open-sourced for community review.”

Stars Arena was hacked on October 7, resulting in the theft of AVAX tokens worth approximately $2.9 million. All of the funds contained in the smart contract were lost as a result of the vulnerability.

The social finance platform recovered approximately 90 percent of the stolen funds following the cyberattack.

The team has confirmed that the recovery was made possible due to successful negotiations with the perpetrator of the attack. The hacker surrendered 239,493 AVAX in exchange for a 10% bounty on their head, according to the Stars Arena team.

The Stars Arena application operates as a social finance platform on the Avalanche blockchain. It functions as a forked version of Friend.tech, an application that allows users to purchase tokens that grant access to a specific individual’s chat room.