Crypto theft in Solana’s Pump.fun, crypto king arrested, and more…

• Solana’s Pump.fun and Stacks-based ALEX suffered attacks worth millions 
• United States’ DOJ also arrested two brothers linked to a $25M Ethereum exploit

Crypto-regulations and exploits have dominated market headlines this week. From Solana’s Pump.fun to Bitcoin’s L2 ecosystem, the exploits have siphoned millions of dollars. 

Solana’s memecoin launcher Pump.fun suffered an exploit on Thursday, leading to about $2 million in losses. This, according to the Head of Research at Wintermute –

Surprisingly, the attack came just hours after the platform hit record-high revenues and surpassed Solana, its L1 blockchain security. 

According to Pump.fun, the platform was compromised by a former employee who claimed responsibility for the attack. Announcing the resumption of normal operations, the memecoin launcher soon revealed, 

“The pump.fun contracts are safe. They have always been safe. A former employee used their privileged position at the company to misappropriate ~12.3K SOL (~$1.9m)” 

More crypto hacks and arrests

Solana’s ecosystem wasn’t the only one to suffer an exploit yesterday. Another attack was recorded on Bitcoin’s ecosystem project ALEX — An automated liquidity exchange based on Stacks [STX], a BTC L2 scaling solution.

Interestingly, the attack also involved a compromised private key, draining the protocol of several assets, including 13.7 million STX. 

The project recovered some funds and proposed asking Stacks to burn the accounts linked to the stolen STX funds. However, Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali declined the request, citing, 

“The ALEX private key compromise is unfortunate. There is no clarity contract issue or exploit, though.”

It remains to be seen how the rest of the lost funds at Pump.fun and ALEX will be recovered. 

In the meantime, some long-running crypto-crimes saw major charges and arrests. For instance, the U.S DoJ arrested two brothers for an alleged attack on the Ethereum network. Anton Peraire-Bueno and James Pepaire-Bueno have been accused of stealing $25 million using sophisticated MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) bots. This episode marks the first DOJ lawsuit against MEV. 

Also, Canadian authorities recently arrested the controversial ‘Canadian crypto-king,’ Aiden Pleterski. Pleterski was allegedly running a crypto investment scam as recently as February, despite being petitioned for bankruptcy over a year ago over similar schemes that saw investors lose over $40 million. According to a report, Pleterski was arrested and charged with money laundering. However, he has now been released after bail.