Ankr, a decentralized blockchain infrastructure provider that operates an array of nodes globally distributed across more than 50 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks.
Recently, the decentralized blockchain infrastructure provider tried to reassure its community on December 02, 2022, with an initial response to the theft of around $5.5 Million from BNB Chain liquidity pools and money markets.
Ankr Security Update
On December 03, 2022, Ankr updated its BNB liquid staking token (aBNBc) Token Exploit and published a blog-post on its official site. Ankr added it will use reserves to compensate liquidity providers for the aBNBc pools.
The Liquidity Provider (LP) is known as a market maker, who provides their crypto assets to a platform to help with decentralization of trading. Liquidity Staking is a way to put the cryptocurrency to use without selling the token directly.
According to the recent update, all the staked assets on Ankrstaking are secure, and all infrastructure services were unaffected.
Moreover, a hacker was able to compromise a deployer’s private key after the Ankr team carried out an upgrade (pending law enforcement investigation). The attacker used the deployer keys to modify the smart contract that allowed for unlimited minting of aBNBc.
The attackers immediately began using DEXs to trade through LPs. Ultimately draining ~$5M USD. Then Ankr’s team quickly responded with the help of many DEXs that halted the trading of the aBNB tokens immediately upon discovering the breach.
Ankr stated the only users at risk were liquidity providers, and it has created a list of the ones affected to make sure that it will fully compensate them.
Ankr team mentioned that they understand diluted aBNBc was speculatively traded after the exploit occurred, but they are only able to compensate LP’s caught off guard by the event.
The CEO Response
In the recent update, the Co-Founder and CEO of Ankr, Chandler Song, stated “Thanks to the fast actions from the Ankr team and various protocols, we were able to minimize any damage done extremely quickly. Hacks and exploits from bad actors like this are an unfortunate possibility in Web3, even with every attention to detail in security processes – but we were well prepared.”
Mr. Song further said, “Unlike previous events in the space this year, we are doing the right thing by our community and ensuring that this is taken care of immediately with lost funds restored.”
The current price of ANKR token is $0.021933 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $27.53 Million USD. The token is up 3.10% in the last 24 hours with a live market cap of $211.93 Million USD.
Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while his post-graduation. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing along with being a developer. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/12/03/here-is-an-update-on-a-bnb-token-exploit/