The Singapore High Court has granted permission to Intelligent Sanctuary (iSanctuary), a financial investigation firm, to attach nonfungible tokens (NFTs) as a freeze order to cold wallets associated with a hacking incident. These NFTs will not block transactions but will serve as a warning to counterparties and exchanges that the wallets were involved in a hack. iSanctuary has also developed a method to track funds leaving the wallets through the NFTs, which will be permanently attached to the wallets.
iSanctuary was hired by a businessperson who had lost $3 million in crypto assets and successfully tracked the stolen funds. The evidence presented by iSanctuary to the Singapore High Court led to the issuance of the worldwide freeze order, a first for that court. Mintology, an app created by Singaporean NFT studio Mintable, is identified as the producer of the NFTs.
In a related development, it was reported that the stolen funds from the hack were laundered by fraudsters, purportedly from Singapore, through crypto exchanges based in Singapore, Spain, Ireland, Britain, and other European countries.
iSanctuary founder Jonathan Benton described the use of NFTs as a game changer, stating that they can be used to identify illicit assets and serve civil or criminal orders on wallets, effectively policing the blockchain.
NFTs have previously been used to deliver court summonses in Italy and the United States.
