Mythereum — Treasure Chest Discovered!
Mythereum has been in an “Open Beta” format since its updates in 2019. As such, we offered unique Bug Bounties — in that when a significant bug was discovered, the discoverer would generally reap the initial benefits of the usage of said bug (but not to a point of unbalancing). With the original site (and contracts) being brought back online, we persist in the same state of affairs as we were in last we had been active. This includes the random bug discovery (there are far fewer than in the early days) that may occur, even now!
In recent discoveries, two significant bugs that could have been extensively exploited were discovered. The discoverers did not make the method of exploitation known and Mythereum has since “patched” up the affected areas to ensure nothing else could happen in such a way. Below is a detailed report of these two discoveries.
Unexpected Genesis Contract Minting & Supply Reduction
As always, it is part of the teams’ vision to be as transparent as possible regarding all matters. As we all know, the project has been in hibernation for just about 2 years now, and it’s amazing that we are back. As we wake up the project and all its dynamics, we are finding areas where there may have been errors, needs for improvements, or just things overlooked.
On August 30th, sometime in the afternoon on the east coast, 3 packs of Genesis Cards were minted, producing 21 total cards.
This was a huge surprise to the team as minting was meant to have been finished. After some investigation we discovered how this was possible. It turns out that even though the website had closed the sale of Genesis, there were still some packs available for minting in the contract. At the time the intention was that these few remaining cards would be preserved for use as tournament prizes and rewards and promotional giveaways.
The story then became even more interesting as the three packs were apparently minted by a team of NFT Archaeologist crews. These NFT Archeologists go from dead project to dead project, digging through the contracts to see what is recoverable, much like a real life archaeological dig or treasure hunt. At first the team was taken aback by this turn of events, and the realization that those packs still existed. The team itself was only just re-awakening form the long self-imposed pause in the game and suddenly realized that minting of these remaining Genesis cards was still possible from the contract directly and that there were approximately 420 cards left (~60 packs).
After careful, yet quick deliberation — the Team decided that the best course of action that should be a win for everyone was to permanently lock and burn those card packs, removing approximately 420 genesis cards (almost 9%) from circulation.
We are investigating to see if the specific minting of these 21 will have any impact on the rarity of any other currently known Genesis ID, but from initial preview, none have changed. We will produce a full report on this if we determine (or not) any significant changes to rarity.
With the update coming for minting dates being applied to borders, that puts these 21 cards in a unique position — they will be the only Genesis Cards that will have a 2021 mint stamp for their appearance. It now seems that these NFT archeologists, their intrepid archeological dig and chance printing of these 21 final Genesis cards have become part of the intricate and complex story of the Mythereum Genesis NFT’s. To these NFT archeologists who came across Mythereum, and made this cool discovery we raise our glasses and say thank you for both discovering Mythereum and prompting us to remove from circulation any final remaining Genesis cards.
Note, that with the burning of the last Genesis packs, no more will ever be able to exist. We burned approximately 9% of the total supply, which we believe equates to approximately the equivalent of 25% or more of the active supply.
Below are the images from the three packs minted in 2021:
The treasure hunting however continued, an even more recent discovery was made by someone else. Since having turned off the Forge to enable the website to be accessible without much error — an unknown side effect happened.
Our Survivor Card Edition could be minted directly to onchain due to not having the Forge available to curate the 100 battle requirement. One such entrepreneurial spirit discovered this and was able to mint his 30 free Survivor Cards. We have since patched up this potentiality and added a very large gas fee to deter any future attempts.
Survivor has a much smaller impact than the Genesis minting, but we appreciate community members finding these hidden avenues — it allows us to patch up areas of vulnerability, and is mutually beneficial to those making such discoveries.
All in all — we always put community first, and we thank everyone for their bug reports, and willingness to find areas that we may not realize are vulnerable at first. We prefer to embrace those with the skills to identify potential flaws and to reward them within the constraints of a sustainable ecosystem so long as they remain on the “good” side and reject the dark side.
In regards to the above mentioned cards, they will likely end up being fairly unique — in that they will display minted in 2021, which might end up being very rare for each of these sets!
