$600M Hack Lands in DeFi History Books as Largest Exploit to Date

Crypto World Dazed By Historic Hack

The largest hack and Decentralized Finance simultaneously occurred across three chains today through an exploit on Poly Network. 

Utilizing an elaborate exploit, $600 million worth of crypto was stolen from the multi-chain dApp. In a tweet earlier today, August 10, cross-chain protocol Poly Network announced that it had been hit by a hacker.

"Important Notice: We are sorry to announce that #PolyNetwork was attacked on @BinanceChain  @ethereum  and @0xPolygon"

Tagged addresses show that about $253 million, $85million, and $273million tokens' worth were siphoned from Poly Network's BSC, Polygon, and Ethereum chains, respectively.

Early Rally To Rein In The Stolen Funds

Shortly after the attack, Poly Network, in a tweet, appealed to the hacker to reach out to the team. The platform blended the justice of the law and consideration for owners of the stolen assets, urging the attacker to return the funds.

Poly Network has pleaded with miners and exchanges to freeze tokens from the addresses used by the attacker. The measure is to help prevent the hacker from moving the tokens beyond reach.

In response, Tether blacklisted roughly $33m USDT linked with the attack. OKEx Exchange also promised to keep an eye on the situation according to a Tweet from the CEO, Jay Hao.

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, tweeted a pledge to offer any help he can, in conjunction with other security agencies.

"We are aware of the Poly.Network exploit that occurred today. While no one controls BSC (or ETH), we are coordinating with all our security partners to proactively help", he said.

What It Portends For The DeFi Industry

In recent times Crypto-space has been littered with tales of exploits. From flash loan exploits to rugpulls, the investor-community has had their confidence shaken.

BSCNews has written a couple of news articles about previous hacks. You can read some of them here and here. 

The question of many crypto community members is not if there will be another hack but rather when. More needs to be done by developers and platforms to secure their protocols and restore the sagging confidence in the security of DeFi and crypto as a whole.

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What is Poly Network?
Poly Network is a cross-chain interoperable protocol that allows the transfer of funds across DeFi networks. The protocol was introduced by Ontology, Neo and Switcheo to provide a seamless interoperability network
Since BSC, Polygon and ETH can’t natively communicate, the protocol acts as a custodian and facilitates the transactions.