NEW RELEASE: TICKETS TO THE DEFI AND NFT EVENT OF THE YEAR

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DEFI

In Second Largest DeFi Hack Ever, Blockchain Bridge Loses

$320M Ether
The network has over $1 billion in total value locked and supports six blockchains: Terra, Solana,
Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche and Polygon

BLOCKWORKS EXCLUSIVE ART BY AXEL RANGEL

By Jacquelyn Melinek / February 2, 2022, 6�05 pm EST

SHARE   UPCOMING EVENT

 “As far as we can tell now, only wETH has been affected,
Permissionless
no other tokens,” a Wormhole admin wrote on Telegram
DATE
Tuesday - Thursday, May 17 -
 The protocol offered the hacker a bounty of $10 million for 19, 2022
details on the exploit and return of the stolen wrapped
LOCATION
ether Palm Beach, Florida

Wormhole, one of the largest bridges between Solana and LEARN MORE

other blockchains, has been hacked for about $320 million, or

120,000 ether — making it the second largest DeFi hack to
date. 

The interoperability protocol confirmed the exploit in a tweet

Wednesday evening.

“ETH will be added over the next hours to ensure wETH is

backed 1�1,” the protocol wrote. “More details to come shortly.
We are working to get the network back up quickly.”

Wormhole said earlier that the network was down for

maintenance. Its website stated “Portal is Temporarily
Unavailable” at the time of publication.

The exploit comes after hackers made off with $80 million
from decentralized finance protocol Qubit Finance last week. 

Wormhole is a protocol that allows users to bridge assets

across blockchains. It has over $1 billion in total value locked
and supports six blockchains: Terra, Solana, Ethereum,
Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche and Polygon. 

When a user transfers assets from one blockchain to another,

the bridge steps in to lock the transaction and mint a wrapped
version, such as wrapped ether (wETh), to its final chain.

“As far as we can tell now, only wETH has been affected, no
other tokens,” a Wormhole admin, who goes by the username
d231d, wrote in its Telegram group. The admin added that the
portal bridge is down and asked members not to initiate
further transactions.

Some users reported stuck transactions, but the admin said

that “as soon as the network is back up, you will be able to
redeem the tokens you sent into the bridge.”

The hacker transferred the stolen tokens from Wormhole to their wallet.

While it’s not known how the hacker exploited the network, it
took place over three different transactions around 2�00 pm
EST on Wednesday, according to Etherscan data. 

Wormhole sent an on-chain message to the hacker about an

hour after the exploit, offering a reward for the return of the
tokens. 

“We noticed you were able to exploit the Solana VAA

verification and mint tokens,” the message said. “We’d like to
offer you a whitehat agreement, and present you a bug bounty
of $10 million for exploit details, and returning the wETH
you’ve minted.”
 It’s not clear whether the exploiter responded to Wormhole.
The protocol was not immediately available for comment.

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Jacquelyn Melinek

Jacquelyn Melinek is a New York-based reporter

covering funding, decentralized finance (DeFi) and
decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
She previously reported on energy markets for
S&P Global Platts and Bloomberg News and is
published in over 65 news outlets. She graduated
from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
with a degree in Media and Journalism.

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