BNB Chain Halted After Suspected Hack, $536M Compromised

BNB Chain has been halted after one of the biggest BNB holders started displaying erratic on-chain behavior, suggesting a hack.

BNB Whale Compromised

A BNB whale appears to have been hacked.

On-chain data suggests a large holder of BNB was hacked. At around 17:30 UTC the wallet began withdrawing sizeable sums of coins it had staked from various blockchain ecosystems. It subsequently started swapping and borrowing tokens from a multitude of different protocols in a very rapid fashion. At the time of writing, the wallet controls over $536,930,715 in various assets.

The erratic nature of the wallet’s on-chain activity suggests it may have been compromised. Stablecoin issuer Tether has also already stepped in to blacklist the address, preventing it from sending USDT to new wallets.

At time of writing, the wallet owned 1,020,094.7687 BNB (about $287,870,744), 33,772 in ETH and wETH (about $45,696,989), and approximately $63 million in stablecoins including USDT, BUSD, USDC, and fUSDT. The wallet also has over $127.7 million in assets locked across lending protocols Venus, Geist, and Trader Joe.

The BNB Chain’s official Twitter account indicated the chain would be halted due to “irregular activity.” 

This is a developing story.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.