Crypto market hackers ask for donations as a reward for returning half of the stolen $610 million to Poly Network.
The crypto market on Tuesday witnessed one of the biggest cryptocurrency thefts wherein on record hackers attacked the burgeoning DeFi sector. Hackers attacked the Poly Network on the Ethereum, Binance Chain, and Polygon to steal over $600 million and transfer the assets to their own wallets. Hacks and exploits are not very uncommon in the growing crypto market and this incident has somewhat shaken the trust of investors, who have already dived in very deep into the market.
However, in an unusual twist, the online scammers have returned about $260 million, which is almost half the amount they had stole from the decentralized finance space. Moreover, the hackers have pledged to return the entire amount stolen from DeFi, a protocol known as PolyNetwork that allows users to swap tokens across multiple blockchains.
After successfully hacking and transferring all the assets into their account, the unidentified hackers in a message said they “just dumped all the assets,” adding, “hacking for good, I did save the project.” The hackers later also shared a Q&A online, explaining the motive of the attack saying that it was just “for fun:).”
According to blockchain forensics firm Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson, about $260 million has been returned by the hackers so far. However, it isn’t clear from the PolyNetwork website who actually runs the protocol. Immediately after the scam, Poly Network urged miners to stop trading and also blacklist some of the crypto exchanges such as – Binance, OKEx, Huobi Global, and Coin Base Pro coming from the addresses used for the crypto scam by hackers.
As our communication with Mr. White Hat is going on, the remaining user assets on Ethereum are gradually transfered to the multisig wallet (0x34D6B21D7B773225A102b382815e00Ad876E23C2) requested by Mr. White Hat. pic.twitter.com/FdSfJ6ZIUt
— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 12, 2021
PolyNetwork has also announced through its official Twitter handle that they will take legal action against the hackers. “All the remaining user assets on Ethereum (except for the frozen USDT) have been transferred to the multi-sig wallet controlled by Mr. White Hat and Poly Network team. The repayment process has not yet been completed. To ensure the safe recovery of user assets, we hope to maintain communication with Mr. White Hat and Convey accurate information to the public,” PolyNetwork said in an official statement on Twitter.
Meanwhile, PolyNetwork is working with Mr. White Hat to recover all the stolen assets of miners. “To achieve the goal of full recovery of both assets and cross-chain services, the team will continue to communicate with Mr. White Hat actively to receive the final key,” the statement further read
