The official Twitter (aka X) account of gaming giant Activision Blizzard—the publisher of the Call of Duty and Diablo franchises—was exploited Thursday night and used to share an apparently unaffiliated meme coin on Solana, passing it off as an official token launch.
Screenshots of since-deleted tweets include an image of gaming icon Crash Bandicoot, which Activision owns, and claim to offer up an ATVI token created with Solana Labs, the main development team behind the Solana network. They also included a URL that points to listings for a Solana meme coin that can be traded on decentralized exchanges.
The ATVI token is available on Solana, but does not appear to have any connection to Activision Blizzard, nor Solana Labs for that matter. Crypto tokens can be deployed by anyone on a decentralized network, and meme coins are often inspired by viral internet images, public figures and companies, news events, and more.
The scheme to pass ATVI off as an official Activision Blizzard token does not appear to have netted many victims. According to data from DexScreener, the token has seen a grand total of $16,000 worth of trades across less than 500 transactions, and the price has crashed by 99.9% since a brief pump late Thursday. It’s priced at a tiny fraction of a penny, as of this writing.
They hacked Activision Blizzard
🤣You will lose your money don’t do this pic.twitter.com/n1lR3oR3tk
— Jonah 🎮 (@RealJonahBlake) March 15, 2024
“Thank you for your patience. We have regained control of the @ATVI_AB account. We take security seriously and we plan to investigate what occurred to avoid situations such as these in the future,” the account tweeted last night.
Activision declined further comment to Decrypt’s GG beyond the tweeted statement. The company was acquired by tech juggernaut and Xbox maker Microsoft last fall for nearly $69 billion following a year and a half of regulatory challenges.
Decrypt's GG also reached out to Twitter for comment or additional details, but did not receive an immediate response.
Meme coins have flourished on Solana in recent months due to the network’s low fees. Solana-based meme coins like Dogwifhat (WIF) and Bonk (BONK) are among the most valuable cryptocurrencies in the world by market cap, while recent Solana meme coin trends have included misspelled renditions of politicians’ names.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.