- Hackers exploit pNetwork and makes away with $12M in wrapped BTC (pBTC).
- Platform says bug only affected the BSC Bridge, offers hacker $1.5 million for returning funds.
- Affected users to be compensated.
Bitcoin wrapping DeFi platform pNetwork announced late Sunday that a hacker exploited its codebase and made away with 277 pBTC ($12 million wrapped BTC), amounting to over 38% of the entire network’s market cap of around $31.8 million.
The attack only affected its Binance Smart Chain (BSC) bridge, the platform said.
“We’re sorry to inform the community that an attacker was able to leverage a bug in our codebase and attack pBTC on BSC Stealing 277 pBTC (most of its collateral). The other bridges were not affected. All other funds in the pNetwork are safe.”
The news led to an 18% drop in the price on PNT, which slipped below $1 to $0.96 from a monthly average of around $1.2.
$1.5 Million Bug Bounty to Hacker
The team said it has identified and is working to fix the bug, with network reactivation expected after thoroughly reviewing the proposed fix. The affected users are also to expect compensation from the network.
“We’re working on a solution for users who were affected by the attack (pBTC on BSC holders only).”
Additionally, the team said it would offer the hacker a $1.5 million bug bounty if they returned the stolen money to the community.
“Finding vulnerabilities is part of the game unfortunately, but we all want the DeFi ecosystem to continue growing, returning funds is a step in that direction.”
pNetwork is a decentralized blockchain platform that allows users to bridge their NFTS, crypto assets, and DAO. It supports cryptocurrency transfer into over 10 supported blockchains for yield farming, lending, and other DeFi uses. These include Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, EOS, Dogecoin, Algorand, Litecoin, xDAI, Telos, Polygon, and Arbitrium.
Wrapped BTC TVL Surpasses 1% of Total Circulating Supply
It uses the PNT governance and utility token that underpins the network. The blockchain generates pTokens for respective blockchains, pegged assets that allow users to explore multiple liquidity channels by locking BTC in the ecosystem.
Wrapped BTC is currently one of the most effective ways of bridging BTC to other blockchains while providing real use cases for the leading crypto asset. Other popular platforms for tokenizing BTC include Wrapped BTC (WBTC)-the leading protocol by a significant margin, Houbi BTC (HBTC), and renBTC.
As of September 2021, over 1% of the total circulating supply is wrapped and providing liquidity in various DeFi protocols, most of which are built on Ethereum, according to on-chain analysis platform Arcane Research.
“In total, 240,000 BTC has now been tokenized into Ethereum protocols. WTBC remains the most popular option for tokenized BTC and accounts for 80% of all the BTC at work in Ethereum.”