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Biggest DeFi hack ever: The story so far
Written by Written by Shubham Pandey
Reviewed by Reviewed by Shubham Pandey
Updated August 11, 2021

DeFi’s mammoth growth has attracted more than just new investors. Over 70% of 2021’s major hacks and fraud have been DeFi related.

In what may be the largest attack in decentralized finance, Poly Network was attacked and the alleged hacker drained roughly $600 million in crypto. According to the official announcement, the hacker drained assets from Binance Chain, Ethereum, and the Polygon network.

Poly Network, a protocol launched by the founder of Chinese blockchain project Neo, operates on the Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, and Polygon blockchains. Meanwhile, analysis from each of the respective networks concluded the hackers stole roughly $273 million in Ethereum, $85 million in USD Coin (USDC) from the Polygon network, and $253 million from Binance Smart Chain. The assets stolen included a great number of tokens including ETH, DAI, UNI, SHIB, FEI, BUSD, BTCB, ETHB, BNB, USDT, and more.

 

As per Poly Network’s tweet,

“The hacker exploited a vulnerability between contract calls, exploit was not caused by the single keeper as rumored.”

Furthermore, according to China-based blockchain security firm, Slowmist, “Combined with the flow of funds and multiple fingerprint information, it can be found that this is likely to be a long-planned, organized, and prepared attack”

However, a tweet by Sushiswap “super-coder” Mudit Gupta, stated:

“This was not a DeFi or smart contract hack but a traditional key compromise combined with irresponsible design decisions taken by Poly Network.”

A message from the Hacker was highlighted by Wu Blockchain. It stated:

In addition to this, the team behind Poly Network released a statement addressing the hacker directly

Having said that, crypto proponents within the space did offer help. Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, tweeted:

Disclaimer: AMBCrypto's content is meant to be informational in nature and should not be interpreted as investment advice. Trading, buying or selling cryptocurrencies should be considered a high-risk investment and every reader is advised to do their own research before making any decisions.

Shubham Pandey

Shubham is a full-time journalist/ Crypto data analyst at AMBCrypto. A Master's graduate in Accounting and Finance, Shubham's writings mainly focus on the cryptocurrency sector with particular emphasis on market research studies and communications for >2 years. Also, a die-hard Chelsea fan #KTBFFH.

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