According to a representative for Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, a $570 million theft has affected a blockchain connected to the company. This is the latest in a string of attacks that have hit the cryptocurrency industry this year. The BNB Chain, formerly known as Binance Smart Chain until February, was using a blockchain “bridge,” according to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who claimed that tokens were taken from it. Utilizing blockchain bridges, cryptocurrency can be moved across other apps.
Zhao estimated that the hackers stole cryptocurrency worth about $100 million. Later, according to a blog post by BNB Chain, the hacker withdrew a total of 2 million BNB coins, valued at about $570 million.
The Binance representative said in an email that “the majority” of the BNB was still in the hacker’s digital wallet address and that “unrecovered” funds were roughly $100 million.
The crypto industry has long been plagued by thefts, which have increasingly turned their attention to blockchain bridges.
BNB Chain supports the BNB cryptocurrency, formerly known as Binance Coin, which, according to CoinGecko data, is the fifth-largest coin in the world with a market value of almost $46 billion.
According to crypto analytics company Chainalysis, 13 distinct bridge attacks have resulted in the theft of about $2 billion in cryptocurrency, largely this year.
In one of the biggest cryptocurrency heists ever, hackers stole over $615 million in March through Ronin Bridge, which was used to transfer cryptocurrency into and out of the game Axie Infinity. The heist was connected to North Korean hackers by the US.
BNB Chain said that it had temporarily stopped using its blockchain before restarting it at 0630 GMT.
By getting in touch with the blockchain’s “validators,” which are organizations or people who confirm blockchain transactions, BNB Chain claimed in its blog post that it was “able to halt the event from spreading.” Without providing any other information, BNB Chain stated that there are 44 validators distributed throughout several time zones.
BNB Chain announced that it would implement a new “governance system” to prevent such attacks and to increase the number of validators.
BNB Chain is referred to as a “community-driven, open-sourced, and decentralized ecosystem” on the Binance website.
