KEY POINTS

  • Stepn has faced multiple DDOS attacks in the past few days
  • Developers are working on the application to resume services soon
  • Stepn will halt its services in China mid-July

"Move to Earn" game Stepn, which uses Solana-based non-fungible tokens and rose to popularity in 2022, was the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks this weekend.

Stepn, which styles itself as a "Web 3.0 lifestyle app" that combines elements of a play-to-earn (P2E) game with a fitness app, confirmed the DDOS attacks via a series of Twitter posts.

"We have been under multiple DDOS attacks in the past hours. Securing the servers and recovery may take anywhere from 1 to 12 hours. We recommend you take some rest during the maintenance or otherwise the work-outs may not be recorded properly," the official Twitter handle of the application said Sunday.

The developers are working on the application to resume their services after the attacks. DDOS is a method using which malicious actors can shut down a protocol or an application by "overloading a blockchain network's servers with requests, resulting in the server losing connectivity to its other applications," according to Ledger, a hardware wallet firm.

In a Twitter thread dated Saturday, Stepn revealed that the application was facing congestion issues due to a 25 million DDOS attack sent to the server within a short period of time.

Interestingly, the Web 3.0 application said last month it will halt its services in China starting in mid-July "in order to actively respond to relevant regulatory policies." It remains unclear as to why the nation has banned Stepn.

Following the closure of services on July 15, the owners of the NFT sneakers, which are a vital part of the game, will not be able to earn rewards.

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