Hacker Involved in $320 Million Wormhole Exploit Eligible for Airdrop
The post Hacker Involved in $320 Million Wormhole Exploit Eligible for Airdrop appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News
A significant twist in the narrative saw the hacker responsible for the massive $320 million Wormhole bridge exploit in 2022 as a candidate for the $50,000 airdrop of W tokens, a newly released token by Wormhole.
As revealed by Pland, a cyber sleuth working under a pseudonym, some of the wallet addresses connected with the Wormhole exploit were missed when excluding eligible addresses for the airdrop.
Stopping immediately by Wormhole
Information from the Solana-based airdrop checker Airdrop.link, as reported by Degen News exhibited that there were 4 addresses associated with the Wormhole attack which were temporarily able to get Wormhole’s airdrop. At such a time, the hacker would have grabbed Wormhole (W) airdrop tokens, about 31,642 W worth $50,000 based on the current prices.
Nevertheless, the investigation later indicated that the specific wallet addresses related to the hacker failed to satisfy the criteria of the airdrop, seemingly leading the Wormhole team to soon fix the matter and thereupon prevent unwarranted claims.
Biggest ever crypto theft of 2022
One of the leading protocols in the cross-chain space, Wormhole, running transactions using Ethereum, Solana, and Binance Smart Chain among others, was severely hit by an exploit in 2022.
Hackers cashing in on the Wormhole Bridge flushed out 120k wETH, which has a token value of $321 million. This incident became one of the major thefts of DeFi funds in 2022, when hackers converted wETH tokens to Ethereum, Solana SOL, and other coins, including USDC, APE, and SX.
Web3 infrastructure company Jump Crypto and Oasis.app DeFi platform performed a counter exploit on the Wormhole bridge hacker and recovered a hefty $225 million.
Wormhole’s massive airdrop
Wormhole announced a huge airdrop of about 675 million Wormhole (W) tokens that totalled approximately $850 million by current market prices setting fans’ ablaze. This airdrop is more than a bonanza for over 400,000 eligible wallets, which is more than enough to treat everyone using Solana, Ethereum, and other compatible chains.
The W token had spectacular price moves during the launch phase, hitting $1.66 before falling to the current $0.98, which represents a nearly 27% dip in the price.
According to CoinGecko, the W’s market capitalization reached almost $3 billion at its peak but now it stays around $2.4 billion.
The Wormhole and W Token ideas indicate that the crypto sphere is changing and remains to have high risks for the users, hence there is a need for more secure platforms and better regulation to ensure the safety of the funds and trust sustainability in the platform.
Filed under: Bitcoin - @ April 5, 2024 4:58 am