Hassan Maishera
The Poly Network protocol was hacked yesterday, leading to a loss of $611 million. However, the hackers have started returning the funds, with more than $1 million returned so far.
Poly Network attacks return $1 million
The Poly Network protocol suffered the deadliest attack yet in the history of the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, losing $611 million to the attackers. As a cross-chain protocol, the hackers were able to steal such a huge amount from Poly Network by exploiting a cryptography issue.
The hackers stole the funds from three different blockchains, Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Polygon. However, the cryptocurrency space has been alert since, and efforts have been made to ensure that the hacker(s) doesn't move the funds or convert them to fiat currencies.
According to the latest data, the hacker(s) has returned $1 million of the stolen funds in USDC stablecoin to the Polygon blockchain. The funds were returned in three transactions in incrementally increasing amounts. So far, the attacker has returned 10, 10,000 and 1 million in USDC.
In addition to that, the attacker has returned $1.1 million in BTCB, a bitcoin-pegged token on Binance Smart Chain. The hacker has declared willingness to surrender and return the funds. This was evident after creating a token called "The hacker is ready to surrender" and sent it to the designated Polygon address.
When or if the funds are finally returned, it would be a big relief for the Poly Network as no attack of such magnitude has hit a DeFi platform before. In the attack, the hacker stole $273 million of Ethereum tokens, $253 million in tokens on Binance Smart Chain and $85 million in USDC on the Polygon network.
USDT issuer Tether is one of the first entities to make a substantial move to block the funds from being moved. Tether blacklisted the stolen USDT tokens (worth $33 million), ensuring that the attacker won't be able to move the funds. Binance also declared interest in helping security experts to stop the funds from being moved.
