Nomad To Restart Bridge After Crippling $190 Million Hack

Cross-chain bridge Nomad has announced that it is preparing to relaunch its bridge and offer partial refunds to users impacted by the hack. 

Nomad suffered a crippling hack in August when malicious actors discovered and exploited a loophole in Nomad’s smart contracts. 

Relaunch And Reimburse 

The Nomad cross-chain bridge has announced that it is preparing to relaunch its bridge and reimburse users that lost funds during the $190 million exploit that took place earlier in the year. The Nomad team announced the launch of its relaunch guide after it fixed the smart contract vulnerability that hackers exploited to orchestrate the August hack. In a Medium post, the team stated, 

“Since the Nomad Token Bridge hack, the team has been working hard on recovering funds and making the necessary updates to safely relaunch the Nomad Token Bridge.”

According to Nomad, the protocol would allow users to bridge back their madAssets, and access a pro-rata share of the recovered funds. The company also implemented a redesign for the token bridge, without which, according to the company, the “first people to bridge back their madAssets would receive canonical tokens on a one-to-one basis until there were no canonical tokens left.”

In an attempt to avoid this first-come, first-serve approach, Nomad implemented several changes in the protocol and gave users the ability to bridge back, access a portion of the recovered funds, and ensure that the tokens accessed are in the original token, providing impacted users with a mechanism to access any funds recovered in future. Nomad added, 

“Given the scope of these changes, a full audit of the smart contracts was completed along with an additional re-review of any remediations with our auditors.”

Verification Process Open 

Nomad also asked its users to go through and comply with all Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations through CoinList, a centralized exchange and launchpad, to receive their reimbursed funds. The team stated that KYC was essential to ensure that all payments were in line with compliance norms. 

Once the verification process is completed, users will receive a special NFT that will grant them access to a proportional share of the recovered funds on the Ethereum blockchain. The NFTs will be non-transferable and allow holders to receive any other funds that are recovered in the future. 

The Nomad Bridge Hack 

Nomad’s cross-chain bridge allows users to move assets across Ethereum, Avalanche, Moonbeam, and Evmos blockchains. In August, malicious actors discovered a security vulnerability in Nomad’s smart contracts, which enabled them to steal funds through dubious transactions. An analysis of the hack revealed that the original hackers were joined by hundreds of copycat hackers, using the same vulnerability, but modifying the recipient address, token amount, and target tokens.

The hack resulted from a faulty software update initiated by the Nomad developers, which allowed anyone to drain funds from the protocol. The hack resulted in $190 million being stolen from Nomad, making it one of the biggest crypto hacks of 2022. As of August, Nomad had managed to recover almost $37 million from the stolen funds with help from ethical hackers, with the company still asking hackers to return the stolen tokens.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.