Wormhole, one of the most notorious cross-blockchain bridges may have been a victim of a cyberattack that wiped out $326 million from the ecosystem on Wednesday.
The project’s official Twitter account confirmed in a tweet that the bridge is currently down, as the developers exploit a potential attack. The platform’s website reads, “Portal is Temporarily Unavailable.”
On-chain analysts raised alarm about 80,000 Ether (ETH) transactions from Wormhole to an address that currently owns over $250 million worth of ETH. According to another developer, the hacker also managed to keep 40,000 ETH on the Solana network.
In a tweet, prominent pseudonymous Paradigm security researcher “samczsun” said that the Wormhole team has reached out to the exploiter’s address on the Ethereum network, offering a $10 million bounty for returning the funds.
holy fuc*ing shit @wormholecrypto is not having a good time right now pic.twitter.com/Q6tcqAngCL
— samczsun (@samczsun) February 2, 2022
The hack has resulted in scrutiny among DeFi enthusiasts because the hack might suggest that ETH that has been bridged to Solana may be unbacked. Cross-blockchain bridges often work by taking an asset, such as ETH, and locking it in a contract to issue a parallel asset on the bridged chain.
