Topline
Hackers allegedly breached blockchain-based platform Poly Network and extracted more than $600 million in cryptocurrencies, the company announced Tuesday, marking the biggest hack ever in the decentralized finance space that’s heating up among investors.
Nearly $300 million in ether was allegedly hacked.
getty
Key Facts
“We are sorry to announce that #PolyNetwork was attacked,” the company tweeted Tuesday morning, disclosing that hackers transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to separate cryptocurrency wallets.
Cryptocurrency wallet addresses disclosed by Poly, a cross-chain interoperability network, show transfers early Tuesday of 2,858 ether tokens worth about $267 million, 6,610 binance coins worth more than $252 million and roughly $85 million in USDC tokens on the Polygon network.
The combined value of the stolen tokens, as of Tuesday morning, totaled roughly $604 million, making it even bigger than the $460 million hack on cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox that led to the company’s bankruptcy and heightened regulation in the nascent space about seven years ago.
Jay Hao, the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange OKEx, responded to the attack Tuesday and said the company is “watching the flow of coins and will do [its] best to manage the situation.”
Blockchain-based security firm SlowMist issued a statement mere hours after the attack saying it had identified the attacker’s email, IP address and device fingerprints, and was still working on tracking additional identity clues.
Poly, which was founded by the $3.3 billion Chinese cryptocurrency project NEO, did not immediately respond to Forbes‘ request for comment.
Crucial Quote
“We call on miners of affected blockchain and crypto exchanges to blacklist tokens coming from the above addresses,” Poly Network tweeted Tuesday.
Big Number
$103 billion. That’s the current market value of all decentralized finance tokens (like Polygon), according to crypto-data website CoinGecko. The space shot past a $100 billion valuation for the first time ever and peaked at about $150 billion in May before the broader crypto market crashed nearly 50%.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Further Reading
Ethereum Spikes After New Upgrade As Its Crypto Market Dominance Gains An Edge On Bitcoin (Forbes)