“We will return the stolen funds instead of creating a DAO,” the hackers who stole over $600 Million worth of crypto Tuesday from Poly Network have said. The DeFi platform may not have expected this response when they sent an appeal following the hacking incident.
The hacker had initially toyed with the idea of starting a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) where he would allow the audience to decide what to do with the fortune of stolen cryptocurrency. However, in a message embedded in their Ethereum transaction, the hacker said he would return the funds. The hacker said he was “not so interested” in the funds anymore. He added he would forfeit them to become an “eternal legend.”
The Hack Penetrated Three Different Blockchains
The stolen funds are among the highest heists in DeFi history. They included wrapped Ether (WETH), wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and several other cryptocurrencies. Following the discovery, Poly Network wrote an open letter to the hacker asking to return the stolen digital assets. The company wrote:
“Dear Hacker, We want to establish communication with you and urge you to return the hacked assets.”
According to Poly Networks, the hacker took advantage of “vulnerability between contract calls.” The Poly community protocol enables different blockchains to speak to each other. This hack penetrated three different blockchains, namely Binance Chain, Ethereum, and Polygon. The incident will definitely call into question the security of the other established DeFi platforms.
There is over $80 Billion in DeFi
Several big players in the DeFi scene swung into action immediatley. According to DeFi analytics site DeFi Pulse, some of the funds the hacker had tried to transfer got frozen. Reports indicate that the Tether CTO froze an estimated $33 million in USDT immediately after the attack was reported.
Binance CEO Chang Peng Zhao also pledged proactive support toward recovery. DeFi Pulse shows there’s over $80 billion tied up in different DeFi schemes.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is a concept that guarantees ordinary people can make money in an open system that’s free from the choking conventional banking system. Users employ contracts involving DeFi guarantees using unconventional cryptocurrency exchanges just like the name Decentralized Finance suggests.
Tom is a freelance writer with over 10-years’ experience in content creation, blog writing, and SEO specializing in the blockchain and cryptocurrency niche. As a philosophical figurehead, he believes that to make our world a better place, we must invest in incorruptible products and procedures, of which Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are leading examples.
