The attack on Wormhole represents the second largest decentralized finance (DeFi) exploit ever, following after the USD 600 million Poly Network attack and is the largest attack to date on Solana, a rival to Ethereum that is proving popular in the non-fungible token (NFT) ecoystems. Solana, is growing in popularity, because it is cheaper and faster to use than Ethereum.
Bridges
Crypto owners do not have to operate exclusively within one blockchain ecosystem, so developers have built cross-chain bridges to let users send cryptocurrency from one chain to another. Wormhole is a protocol that lets users move their tokens and NFTs between solana and ethereum.
Profits
Analysis from blockchain cybersecurity firm CertiK shows that the attacker’s profits were at least USD 251 million worth of Ethereum, nearly USD 47 million in Solana, and more than USD 4 million in USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the price of the U.S. dollar.
The organisation quickly issued a statement claiming that Ethereum would be added to the bridge “over the next hours” to ensure that its wrapped Ethereum tokens remain backed.
Funds returned
While the details of the hack remain undisclosed, Wormhole Tweeted on Thursday that “all funds have been restored” and that its site was functioning again. The company failed to provide any further details.
Scammers have been reported as stealing millions in cryptocurrency every month, though exploits of networks are rare by comparison.
