More than $600m lost in worst ever DeFi hack
Poly Network, a cross-chain protocol, has been attacked by a hacker who drained $611m (£441m) in the worst ever theft affecting Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
Poly Network, which operates on the Ethereum, Binance and Polygon blockchains took to Twitter to announce the theft. They said: “We are sorry to announce that #PolyNetwork was attacked on @BinanceChain, @Ethereum and @0xPolygon.”
“We call on miners of affected blockchain and crypto exchanges to blacklist tokens coming from the above addresses” they added.
Three accounts have been identified in relation to the attack one of which currently holds $182m worth of crypto while the other two contain $130 million and $85 million each. Poly Network said they would take legal action against the hackers in order to retrieve the funds.
The news comes as CipherTrace, a blockchain forensics company, published a report revealing that the DeFi sector has registered $474 in losses as a result of criminal activity between January and July this year accounting for 75 per cent of money lost in crypto hacks.
Despite the risks investment into DeFi, the collective term for crypto projects which offer users decentralised alternatives to financial services offered by banks, is surging. According to DeFi Pulse, there is $80.25bn of value locked in DeFi smart contracts representing a 406 per cent increase since the start of the year.
Mary Beth Buchanan, Chief Legal Officer for blockchain analytics company Merkle Science, said that today’s hack highlighted the need for “regulators and law enforcement agencies to quickly upskill on DeFi — how it’s being used and the risks individuals may be exposed to.”
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