WETH

Jump Crypto Replaces $320 Million in Ethereum Taken From Wormhole Exploit

03/02/2022 by Idelto Editor

On February 2, 2022, the Wormhole Network’s ethereum solana bridge was exploited for 120,000 WETH (wrapped ethereum) worth $320 million and the following day, the team explained that “all funds have been restored and Wormhole is back up.” The team has also said a “detailed incident report” will be published soon.

Wormhole Network Returns, Jump Crypto Replenishes Stolen Ethereum

An attacker managed to siphon 120,000 WETH from the Wormhole Network’s ethereum solana bridge on Wednesday. The wrapped ethereum was worth $320 million when it was stolen and the Wormhole team had paused the network.
When the funds were stolen, the Wormhole Deployer left an onchain message for the attacker that asked if they would return the funds for a $10 million bug bounty.
The attack followed the recent Qubit cross-chain bridge vulnerability five days ago, which saw the loss of $80 million.
The following day after the exploit happened, the Wormhole team disclosed on Twitter that the network was back up and running and the crypto funds were reimbursed.
“All funds have been restored and Wormhole is back up,” the team tweeted at 8:39 a.m. on Thursday morning (EST). “We’re deeply grateful for your support and thank you for your patience. The team is working on a detailed incident report and will share it ASAP.”
The Wormhole team says that the contract was exploited for 120,000 coins at 18:26 UTC, and at 00:33 UTC, “[the] vulnerability was patched.” Furthermore, at 13:08 UTC, “[the] ETH contract has been filled and all wETH are backed 1:1” and at “13:29 UTC the Portal (token bridge) is back up.”
The Wormhole Network’s ethereum solana bridge lets both ETH and SOL users cross chains in a bi-directional manner.

Cross-chain bridge technology has been a big theme in 2021 and into 2022, with a myriad of blockchains interacting with the Ethereum network or with alternative smart contract blockchains.
While the Wormhole team did not publicly disclose how the funds were returned in their Twitter message, it seems the digital assets firm and Wormhole’s parent company Jump Crypto replenished Wormhole’s losses, according to a statement the firm published on Twitter.
“[Jump Crypto] believes in a multichain future and that [Wormhole] is essential infrastructure. That’s why we replaced 120K ETH to make community members whole and support Wormhole now as it continues to develop,” the Jump Crypto Twitter account said.

What do you think about the Wormhole Network exploit and Jump Crypto replenishing the ethereum? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Wormhole Network’s Cross-Chain Bridge Exploited for Over $250 Million in Ethereum

02/02/2022 by Idelto Editor

Reports indicate that the Wormhole Network’s ethereum solana bi-directional bridge has been exploited by an attacker for *93,750 ether or more than $250 million using today’s ethereum exchange rates. The developers behind the Wormhole Network have told the public the network is “down for maintenance,” as the team “looks into a potential exploit.”

*Editor’s Note: This post has been updated to reflect new information provided by the Wormhole team that says the bridge was exploited for 120,000 WETH.

Wormhole Network’s Ethereum Solana Bridge Exploited, More Than 93,000 Ethereum Siphoned

According to various reports and a few onchain transactions the Wormhole Network’s crosschain ethereum solana bridge has been exploited for $250 million in ether or 93,750 ETH.
While the team has not published a post mortem, the Wormhole Network developers published a tweet that said the network was down for the time being.
“The wormhole network is down for maintenance as we look into a potential exploit,” the tweet said. “We will provide updates here as soon as we have them. Thank you for your patience.”
Other accounts of the situation noted that the attacker was exploiting Solana (SOL) too in addition to the stolen ether. “Okay this is too interesting to stay away. Looks like the wormhole exploiter is wreaking havoc on the Solana side too,” the Twitter account dubbed Robot Dad said on Wednesday.
When someone remarked on social media that the Wormhole Network used the term “potential,” others shared an onchain message that was sent to the attacker from the Wormhole Deployer.
The message states: “This is the Wormhole Deployer. We noticed you were able to exploit the Solana VAA verification and mint tokens. We d like to offer you a whitehat agreement, and present you a bug bounty of $10 million for exploit details, and returning the WETH you’ve minted.”

Wormhole Network’s ethereum solana bi-directional bridge has not been around for very long, as Bitcoin.com News recently reported on the cross-chain bridge launch on September 19.
The ethereum solana cross-chain bridge exploit follows the $80 million siphoned from the Qubit cross-chain bridge five days ago. At the time the Qubit attack was the largest defi exploit of 2022.
The Wormhole Network’s exploit is now the largest decentralized finance (defi) breach in 2022 so far, with more than $250 million in ethereum stolen.
The @wormholecrypto Twitter account updated the public at 5:25 p.m. (EST) and explained that 120,000 WETH was stolen. WETH is a form of wrapped or tokenized ethereum (ETH).
“The Wormhole Network was exploited for 120k WETH. ETH will be added over the next hours to ensure WETH is backed 1:1,” the team tweeted. “More details to come shortly. We are working to get the network back up quickly. Thanks for your patience.”

What do you think about the Wormhole Network exploit and the loss of more than $250 million in ethereum? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Total Value Locked in Cross-Chain Defi Bridges Exceeds $22 Billion, Jumping 48% in 30 Days

29/10/2021 by Idelto Editor

On October 29, the total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (defi) protocols is around $243 billion with Curve capturing 7.76% of the dominance. Meanwhile, as ethereum has the largest dominance of TVL in defi, a number of alternative blockchains are seeing significant increases every week. Moreover, the TVL in cross-chain bridge technology has reached $22.48 billion, up 48.8% over the last month.

Defi Total Value Locked Hovers Above $240 Billion — Avalanche, Fantom, Polygon, Tron, Arbitrum TVLs in Defi Increase

The total value locked in decentralized finance apps has continued to climb higher this year reaching new heights. Data from defillama.com’s dashboard shows the TVL on Friday is $243 billion with Curve’s $18.91% commanding a 7.76% dominance rating. The defi protocol Curve supports seven different blockchains, which means users can access cross-chain bridge technology to leverage the decentralized exchange (dex).

Statistics indicate that Ethereum (ETH) is still the dominant defi chain with $164.75 billion worth of the $243 billion TVL in defi aggregate. Despite Ethereum making up a large portion of the defi pie, blockchains like Avalanche, Fantom, Polygon, and Tron have seen TVLs increase a great deal this past week. Avalanche’s TVL in defi increased by 10.44% during the last seven days, while Tron’s TVL in defi spiked by 18.76%.

Cross-Chain Bridge TVLs Spike by 48% This Month — Over $22 Billion Total Value Locked

Fantom’s TVL saw a significant jump this past week gathering 31.21% more in TVL. Meanwhile, Solana and Terra saw much smaller increases this past week as Solana captured 0.44% and Terra only jumped by 0.79%. Arbitrum saw a TVL increase of around 24.58% this week and Polygon (MATIC) lifted by 4.41%. The TVL on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) dipped this week losing 6.15%, but it is still the second-largest defi TVL after Ethereum.

This week the TVL in cross-chain bridges swelled by 48.8% over the last month and on Friday, the cross-chain bridge TVL is $22.48 billion. Statistics from Dune Analytics show Ronin bridge increased by 2% this past week with $5.3 billion. Dune Analytics cross-chain bridge dashboard called “Bridge Away (L1 Ethereum)” shows 16 different bridges from chains like Avalanche, Arbitrum, BSC Anyswap, Boba Network, Fantom Anyswap, Harmony Bridges, and more.

Assets that command the most activity in cross-chain bridges include tokens like WETH, ETH, AXS, USDC, WBTC, MATIC, USDT, and DAI respectively. In terms of WETH/ETH the TVL in cross-chain bridges is around $7,062,594,503 on Friday morning.

What do you think about the amount of funds increasing in cross-chain bridge technology during the last month? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Cross-Chain Bridge Value Increases by 89% in Less Than a Month Surpassing $14 Billion TVL

10/10/2021 by Idelto Editor

23 days ago on September 16, cross-chain bridges held around $7.79 billion total value locked (TVL) and since then the TVL has increased 89% since then to $14.75 billion. Currently, the top bridges include network connections like Polygon Bridges with $4.5 billion, Fantom Anyswap Bridge with $4.1 billion, and the Avalanche Bridge with $3.2 billion.

Cross-Chain Bridge Technology Swells

Decentralized finance (defi) and cross-chain bridge technology have continued to grow in value this year. A cross-chain bridge allows users to connect to another blockchain, which in most cross-chain cases the other network has been the Ethereum chain, and users can swap assets back and forth between each blockchain.

Last month, Bitcoin.com News reported on an in-depth study that covers the myriad of multi-chain bridges that exist today. At that time on September 16, metrics from Dune Analytics’ “Bridge Away (L1 Ethereum)” dashboard indicated that bridges held $7.79 billion total value locked (TVL).

Since then statistics show the TVL has increased by 89% to $14.75 billion in value today. The “Bridge Away” dashboard shows bridges stemming from Harmony, Optics, Boba, Zksync, Near, Solana, Fantom, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimism, Arbitrum, Xdai, Celo, BSC, Moonriver, and RSK.

Polygon Holds Top Position, Loopring Transfers Are the Cheapest

During the last 30 days, the records measured 121,882 unique addresses associated with these different bridges. At the time of writing, Polygon holds the largest TVL capturing $4.5 billion and the Fantom Anyswap Bridge commands $4.1 billion.

Fantom’s bridge is followed by Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, Zksync, Solana, Harmony, Xdai, and Moonriver respectively. Both WETH and ETH have the top spot in terms of asset rankings while the stablecoin USDC runs in the third position.

USDC is followed by WBTC, USDT, MATIC, and DAI as far as asset rankings are concerned. Chainlink (LINK) holds the seventh position among the top assets leveraged on cross-chain bridges. Data from l2fees.info indicates that the current cost to transfer ether via Loopring is $0.17 per transaction. Polygon Hermez is $0.25 per transfer, Zksync $0.26, Optimism $0.97, and Arbitrum One is $1.88 per transfer.

What do you think about the cross-chain bridge technology swelling in value and the transfer fees tied to specific Layer 2 (L2) protocols? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Study Shows Cross-Chain Bridge Technology Growth, Bridges to Ethereum Exceed $7 Billion

16/09/2021 by Idelto Editor

On September 8, 2021, Dmitriy Berenzon, research partner at 1kxnetwork, an early-stage crypto fund that helps founders bootstrap token networks, published a comprehensive research post concerning blockchain bridges. Berenzon’s study highlights the current “multi-chain market structure” and bridges that are making a myriad of blockchains compatible.

Researcher: ‘We Are Finally in a Multi-Chain Market Structure’

For quite some time now, multi-chain or cross-chain technology has been a holy grail of sorts in the cryptocurrency development space. People want to transact with other blockchains by leveraging bridges to different ecosystems.

Dmitriy Berenzon published a detailed article about the subject of cross-chain tech and bridges, and he believes we’ve finally reached a watershed moment. “After years of research & development, we are finally in a multi-chain market structure,” Berenzon stresses in his blog post.

Study Shows Cross-Chain Bridge Technology Growth, Bridges to Ethereum Exceed $7 Billion — Image of bridge technology “as of September 8, 2021; Illustrative / Not fully comprehensive,” according to research partner at 1kxnetwork, Dmitriy Berenzon.

Berenzon’s study looks at blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, Tezos, Avalanche, Polkadot, Binance Smart Chain, Cosmos, and more. The researcher notes that “interoperability unlocks innovation” as he highlights that “bridges are important because they enable users to access new platforms, protocols to interoperate with each other, and developers to collaborate on building new products.”

Moreover, Berenzon lists the many benefits of cross-chain interoperability like leveraging the tech for external validators and federations. Also, using the tech for light clients and relay protocols alongside the ability to access liquidity networks.

However, Berenzon’s report is not just a fluff piece about fintech, and he highlights that cross-chain tech and bridges are an “incredibly difficult problem in distributed systems.” He adds that things like finality and rollbacks need to be addressed, NFT transfers and provenance, alongside stress testing these blockchain bridges over time.

$7.7 Billion Locked Across 8 Bridges to Ethereum

In addition to Berenzon’s insights, statistics from Dune Analytics’ dashboard called “Bridge Away” measure bridge volume tethered to the various chains and Ethereum. In terms of Ethereum bridge relative total value locked (TVL) stats, the Polygon ERC20 Bridge has approximately $2.4 billion in TVL on September 16, 2021.

Polygon’s bridge represents 32.5% of the TVL across eight bridges. The bridges recorded include the Polygon ERC20 Bridge, Arbitrum Bridges, Avalanche Bridge, Solana Wormhole, Fantom Anyswap Bridge, Harmony Bridges, Optimism ERC20 Bridges, and Near Rainbow Bridge.

Across all of these bridges mentioned, there’s $7.79 billion TVL spread across 42,997 unique addresses during the last 30 days. Arbitrum Bridges command 31.5% of the aggregate TVL and the Avalanche Bridge has around 21.2% today.

Solana Wormhole’s TVL is about 6.7% and the Fantom Anyswap Bridge has around 6.6% of the $7.79 billion TVL. Ether and WETH are the top assets held in TVL with $2.9 billion recorded on September 16. USDC is the second leading asset held in bridge TVL with $1.2 billion recorded. This is followed by wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) which has just over a billion dollars held in the overall bridge TVL aggregate total.

What do you think about multi-chain or cross-chain bridge technology and the expanding TVL held by these protocols? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.