Wormhole, one of the popular bridges linking the ethereum and solana blockchains, lost nearly $320 million in an apparent hack on Wednesday afternoon, what experts call one of the biggest hacks ever in the decentralised finance (DeFi) space, CNBC reported.

It is DeFi’s second-biggest exploit ever, just after the $600 million Poly Network crypto heist, and it is the largest attack to date on solana.

According to the CNBC report, Ethereum is the most used blockchain network, and it is a big player in the world of DeFi, in which programmable pieces of code known as smart contracts can replace middlemen like banks and lawyers in certain types of business transactions.

Solana is growing in popularity because it is cheaper and faster to use than ethereum.

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Crypto holders often do not operate exclusively within one blockchain ecosystem, so developers have built cross-chain bridges to let users send cryptocurrency from one chain to another. Wormhole is a protocol that lets users move their tokens and NFTs between solana and ethereum.

Developers representing Wormhole confirmed the exploit on its Twitter account, saying that the network is “down for maintenance” while it looks into a “potential exploit.” The protocol’s official website is currently offline, the report said.

The CNBC report citing blockchain cybersecurity firm CertiK analysis, said the attacker’s profits are at least $251 million worth of ethereum, nearly $47 million in solana, and more than $4 million in USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the price of the US dollar.

A bridge like Wormhole takes an ethereum token, locks it into a contract on one chain, and then on the chain at the other side of the bridge, it issues a parallel token.

An analysis from CertiK shows that the attacker exploited a vulnerability on the solana side of the Wormhole bridge to create 120,000 so-called “wrapped” ethereum tokens for themselves.

Wormhole says that ethereum will be added to the bridge “over the next hours” to ensure that its wrapped ethereum tokens remain backed, but it is unclear where it’s getting the funds to do this, the report said.

(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)

First Published:Feb 3, 2022 8:46 AM IST