Poly Network Multi-Chain DeFi Protocol Suffers $611 Million Heist 

Poly Network has suffered a $611 million heist. The DeFi project announced the unfortunate incident via Twitter on August 10, 2021. In response to the heist, Tether has blacklisted the stolen Ethereum-based USDT tokens and Binance’s Changpeng Zhao has also pledged to work with security teams to tackle the issue.

Poly Network Losses $611 Million

In what has been described as the largest decentralized finance heist so far, Poly Network, a blockchain project aiming to foster interoperability between multiple blockchains, has lost over half a billion dollars to hackers.

TheBlock Researcher Igor Igamberdiev has hinted that the root cause of the heist appears to be a cryptography loophole in the protocol, adding that the bad actors managed to create a fake transaction signature to steal the funds.

Important Notice:
We are sorry to announce that #PolyNetwork was attacked on @BinanceChain @ethereum and @0xPolygon Assets had been transferred to hacker's following addresses:
ETH: 0xC8a65Fadf0e0dDAf421F28FEAb69Bf6E2E589963
BSC: 0x0D6e286A7cfD25E0c01fEe9756765D8033B32C71

— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 10, 2021

Per sources close to the matter, about $273 million worth of ether (ETH), $253 million worth of tokens on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and $85 million in USDC have been stolen from Polygon Network. 

The heist is also having a negative effect on networks that rely on Poly Network’s cross-chain infrastructure,  including the 03 protocol, which has reportedly suspended cross-chain token swaps.

Tether Blacklists Stolen USDT

In a bid to salvage the situation, Tether Limited, the issuers of the USDT stablecoin, has frozen the roughly $33 million (ERC-20) USDT stolen, making it impossible for the hackers to move the tokens.

In the same vein, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance crypto exchange has made it clear that Binance will join forces with its security partners to “proactively” handle the ugly scenario. 

Launched earlier in February 2021 by Zilliqa (ZIL) and the Poly Network team, the Poly interoperability bridge is built to make it possible for various distributed ledgers to interact with each other.

Authorized homogeneous and heterogeneous public blockchains can connect to Poly Network through an open, transparent admission mechanism and can also communicate with other blockchains, the team claims.

As blockchain technology continues to grow in popularity globally, hackers are getting increasingly sophisticated in their dirty games. 

As reported by Crypto.news in July 2021, THORChain (RUNE) suffered two separate attacks in the space of one week. In the second attack, the hackers succeeded in stealing $8 million worth of crypto assets from the decentralized exchange.