Fans of the popular new NFT collection Monkey Kingdom were the target of a hacking theft on Tuesday, reported South China Morning Post. The NFT project Monkey Kingdom was founded by eight pseudonymous crypto enthusiasts based in Hong Kong and promoted by celebrities such as JJ Lin and Steve Aoki,

A hacker infiltrated the group chat of the project and used a phishing scam to get unsuspecting buyers to share their account information, which enabled the hacker to steal 7,000 Solana, the token the NFTs are built on, worth US$1.3 million.

Launched on Nov. 27, Monkey Kingdom currently features 2,222 unique digital portraits of Wukong and has become a focus of attention by NFT fans, especially in Asia.  At the time of the phishing scam, the project was opening pre-sales of Baepes, a collection of 2,221 digital portraits of female Wukongs. The sale was suspended immediately after the news. The Monkey King, known as Sun Wukong in Mandarin Chinese, is a legendary mythical figure and one of the main characters in the 16th-century novel the Journey to the West. 

The team tweeted that it would compensate the users scammed and asked the victims to fill out a Google Form.

Hong Kong native Andrew Man, a real estate investment professional by day and an NFT enthusiast by night, said to SCMP that scams have become common occurrences in the world of NFT as its popularity surges. “It's become very common. Almost every week, someone in my WeChat group would say that some NFTs have been stolen”, he was quoted by SCMP. 

On 24 December, the team behind Monkey King said it processed 1316 compensation requests and the next batch of refunds will be processed after 31 December.