The fourth-largest cryptocurrency robbery in history and the most recent to rock the rapidly expanding decentralised finance (DeFi) industry, hackers have stolen money from one of the most well-known cross-blockchain bridges, Wormhole, valued at up to $320 million.
Wormhole, a platform that let users to transfer their cryptocurrency tokens and NFTs between Ethereum and Solana, announced on Wednesday that it has been compromised for 120,000 units of a variant of ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency.
On-chain analysts have drawn notice to an 80,000 ether (ETH) transaction from Wormhole to an address that now has more than $250 million worth of the same coin. Another developer claims that the attacker also kept 40,000 ETH on Solana and exchanged the tokens for other assets.
Early on Thursday, Wormhole tweeted again to announce that the system vulnerability had been resolved and to affirm that the bridge was now offline as the team looked into potential exploits.
The DeFi platforms let users save, lend, and borrow—typically in digital currencies—while eschewing conventional financial institutions like banks. Wormhole and other cross-blockchain bridges frequently function by using a digital asset like ETH that is locked in a contract to create a counterpart asset on the bridged chain.
Because the ETH crossed to Solana is now unbacked as a result of the attack, this has caused concern in the DeFi sector.
