Hackers stole $320M from Solana bridge wormhole which helps people move digital assets between other blockchains as well so let’s read further in our latest blockchain news.
Wormhole is a protocol that allows users to move tokens and NFTs between Solana and Ethereum and it confirmed that it suffered an exploit of 120,000 wrapped Ethereum worth $320 million which is higher than the initially suspected $250 million:
“ETH will be added over the next hours to ensure wETH is backed 1:1. We are working to get the network back up quickly.”
Earlier on Wednesday, a post on Wormhole’s Twitter account noted that the network is down for maintenance due to a potential exploit and by that point, the exploit pointed out by Paradigm researchers, seemed to be real. A message on the Ethereum blockchain from Wormhole states:
“We noticed that you were able to exploit the Solana VAA verification and mint tokens. We would like to offer you a whitehat agreement, and present you a bug bounty of $10 million for exploit details, and returning the wETH you have minted.”
‼️ The wormhole network is down for maintenance as we look into a potential exploit.
📢 We will provide updates here as soon as we have them.
🙏 Thank you for your patience.
— Wormhole🌪 (@wormholecrypto) February 2, 2022
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VAA stands for validator action approval and refers to the process where transactions get approved. The message means that Wormhole assumes that the attacker actually acted in good faith and in return, it will give them $10 million for pointing out a vulnerability but wants the quarter-billion back. In addition to connecting Solana and Ethereum Wormhole works with Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Oasis, Polygon, and Terra. As the hackers stole $320M from Solana, now the processes are kind of slowed down.
Wormhole allows users of one chain to take wrapped assets and use them on another chain so often they can take advantage of the lower fees or different applications on other networks. To get the ETH into Solana, users have to lock it into a smart contract and get an equivalent amount of wrapped Ethereum. They can trade WETH for Solana-based tokens and if the message is accurate, the hacker was able to short-circuit WETH without keeping ETH locked up.
As recently reported, Solana labs announced Solana PAy service In joint collaboration Circle, Bitcoin, Phanton, Slope, FTX, and Checkout.com. The announcement stated that the premise behind the new service is that digital payments and its technology will go from being a necessary service utility to a true peer-to-peer communication channel between the consumers and merchants.
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