Jump Crypto announced that it replaced 120,000 ETH Friday morning Asia time to its cross-chain bridge Wormhole after a US$325 million exploit left wrapped Ether (wETH) in the Solana ecosystem unbacked.
Fast facts
- The hacker was able to exploit Solana’s verification system to mint 120,000 wETH, and use it to funnel at least 93,750 ETH out of Wormhole’s smart contract into the Ethereum ecosystem.
- Without the Wormhole parent company’s move to replace the missing funds, the existing wETH circulating in Solana’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem would have remained unbacked, making them practically worthless.
- Wormhole’s cross-chain bridge allows users to lock existing assets in other blockchains to use in Solana’s ecosystem for purposes such as collateral.
- Wormhole has since patched the vulnerability and offered the hacker a US$10 million whitehack agreement to return the funds and reveal details of the exploit, but the remaining 93,750 ETH in the perpetrator’s wallet address suggests that a deal has not taken place.
- Price data from Mango Markets, a decentralized trading platform on Solana, show wETH on Solana dropped almost US$200 lower than its counterpart in the Ethereum blockchain, but has since re-established its peg.
- The hack is the fourth-largest crypto theft of all time and the second biggest in DeFi, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.
