Key Takeaways:
- Hackers stole 120k ETH from Wormhole, taking advantage of a bug in the network.
- Jump Trading quickly replaces the stolen money.
- Womhole has offered the hacker a $10 million bounty.
This Wednesday, the crypto industry witnessed the fourth-largest crypto theft of over $320 million from Wormhole. Wormhole is a decentralised finance portal that allows data transfer using crypto networks. Hackers took advantage of a bug in the network and stole 120k digital tokens linked to the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether.
On Thursday, Wormhole’s loss was quickly replenished by Chicago-based Jump Crypto. This leading force helps boost the advancement of Wormhole and acts as a bridge between crypto ecosystems like Ether and Solana. This quick decision of Jump has raised doubts regarding its operations over the years. To clarify its action, it shared a tweet saying that it has replaced the stolen funds “to make community members whole and support Wormhole now as it continues to develop.” The head of Jump Crypto, Kanav Kariya even spent hours replying to tweets that raised questions regarding Jump’s action.
Kyle Samani, the co-founder of Multicoin, confirmed that Jump is covering wormhole losses of over $200 million. The community also found that ETH was gradually transferred from Binance to wormhole. He even said that Jump is covering because they believe in the future of crypto, and in what they’re building.
Elliptic, a London-based blockchain analysis agency, said that the hackers were able to create false wETH tokens. Out of these, 94,000 tokens were shifted to the ethereum blockchain later to boost transactions for Ether.
This theft was a recent blow to the DeFi sector that is one of the fastest-growing yet mainly unregulated. The De-Fi platforms allow users to lend, borrow, and save generally in crypto while avoiding traditional money gatekeepers like banks.
Wormhole was giving continuous updates regarding the theft on Twitter and a few hours ago shared that, “All funds have been restored and Wormhole is back up.” and also posted on its Telegram channel that “all funds are safe”. Elliptic has also informed that the Wormhole has offered the hacker a $10 million “bounty” to receive the funds, citing messages embedded within ether transactions sent to the attacker’s digital address.
