Evolved Apes (NFT)
An NFT collection launched on OpenSea in September 2021 that promised a fighting game. About a week later its anonymous developer 'Evil Ape' vanished with 798 ETH (~$2.7M). In June 2024 U.S. prosecutors charged three U.K. nationals over the scheme.
Also known as: Evolved Apes, Evil Ape
Summary
Evolved Apes was a 10,000-piece NFT collection that launched on OpenSea on September 24, 2021, promising a play-to-earn fighting game in which holders' apes would battle for Ether rewards. About a week after launch, the project's anonymous developer — known as "Evil Ape" — drained the project's wallet of 798 ETH (about $2.7 million) and disappeared, taking down its website and social accounts; the artist had reportedly gone unpaid and contest prizes were never delivered. [1][2]
Outcome
Holders organized to investigate and later launched a community successor ("Fight Back Apes"). In June 2024, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York charged three U.K. nationals in connection with the rug pull. [2][3]
Bracketed numbers refer to the numbered sources listed below.
Sources (2)
See also
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) — Justin Sun token freezeProjectsWLFI, a DeFi project linked to Donald Trump and his family, blacklisted/froze the wallet of major investor Justin Sun in Sept 2025 — ~540–595M unlocked WLFI tokens (~$107M) plus ~2.4B locked. Sun sued, alleging an undisclosed admin 'blacklist backdoor'; WLFI denied it and threatened a countersuit. The dispute is ongoing.
Gala Games exploitTokensOn May 20, 2024 an attacker abused a privileged minter account on the GALA token contract to mint 5 billion GALA (≈$200M+ nominal) and dumped ~600M of them for ~$22M of ETH before Gala froze the address. Gala Games called it an internal access-control failure; the attacker later returned the ~$22M.
This page was last updated on Jun 30, 2026. View revision history.
