It is said that hackers broke into McDonald’s Instagram account on August 21 and used it to support GRIMACE, a memecoin that was released on the Solana blockchain through pump.fun.
That day, the worlds of GRIMACE and Solana memecoins met when McDonald’s social media was hacked and GRIMACE was advertised on the fast food chain’s Instagram.
Guillaume Huin, the marketing director of the business, also wrote about the memecoin on his X (formerly Twitter) account, which points to a coordinated attack.
The hackers sold GRIMACE as “a McDonald’s experiment on Solana,” which got early buyers excited about the chance to make funds quickly. According to data from pump.fun, the memecoin’s value quickly rose to $20 million before dropping to less than $1 million after a sudden pullback.
GRIMACE Posts Removed Swiftly
The hackers thanked people for donating $700,000 worth of Solana in a message, which suggests they stole less than 4% of the total value of the token. Several wallets put 6.2 SOL into GRIMACE just two minutes before the start.
The McDonald’s post went live soon after. It was said that these addresses got nearly $500,000 in Solana’s local currency in just 28 minutes.
Later, the hackers removed all of McDonald’s posts about GRIMACE, even Huin’s tweets. As of press time, neither Huin nor McDonald’s had replied to calls for comment or admitted that there had been a breach.
Since its start in January, 1.8 million meme-themed tokens have been made on Pump.fun, which is an easy-to-use memecoin launchpad on Solana. A lot of these tokens have lost worth, but Pump.fun has made more than $340 million in fees.
As a way to compete with Solana and Pump.fun in the market for new memecoins, Tron and its SunPump platform were released. Within 24 hours, the TRX-based meme community was said to have made a greater profit than Ethereum.
