Ethereum-Based Altcoin Tumbles As DeFi Project Gets Hacked for Millions

Staked Binance Coin on decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ankr (aBNBc) has plummeted by over 90% after hackers exploited the token.

Blockchain security company PeckShieldAlert initially broke news of the hack.

“Seems like Ankr has been exploited, aBNBc has dropped -50%, tons of aBNBc have minted to https://bscscan.com/token/0xe85afccdafbe7f2b096f268e31cce3da8da2990a?a=0xf3a465c9fa6663ff50794c698f600faa4b05c777…

And the exploiter transferred some of the stolen funds to Tornado Cash or bridged them via Celer and deBridgeGate to Ethereum.”

Ankr confirms that the token was indeed compromised, also noting that it’s working closely with exchange platforms to stop transfers of the token.

“All underlying assets on Ankr Staking are safe at this time, and all infrastructure services are unaffected. We have been in touch with the DEXes and told them to block trading. We will reissue tokens in the future after we assess the situation.”

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao says the world’s top digital asset exchange has already initiated the necessary measures to prevent hackers from encashing their loot.

“Binance paused withdrawals a few hours ago. Also froze about $3 million that hackers moved to our CEX [centralized exchange].”

Ankr says the bad actors caused about $5 million worth of damage, but it is planning to compensate users affected by the hack.

“The team at Ankr has assessed the damage and it is max $5 million USD worth of BNB from the liquidity pools. We are currently working hard to resolve this issue efficiently.”

At time of writing, Ankr is trading for $0.022, down by 2.9% while aBNBc is changing hands at $1.51, a staggering drop from its price of $303.55 yesterday, according to CoinMarketCap.

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