Ethena Labs, a platform in the crypto industry, recently experienced an exploit where 480 BNB tokens worth $290,000 were stolen from the Binance launch pool used for farming. The exact vulnerability that led to this exploit is still unknown. On March 29, On-chain security firm PeckShield reported the incident at 8:31 a.m. UTC through a Reddit post.
Interestingly, Ethena Labs had just introduced its $ENA token on the Binance launchpool a few hours before the exploit took place. This allowed users to stake BNB or FDUSD and earn the $ENA token. The platform had already launched its USDe synthetic dollar on the public mainnet on February 19. By March 8, Ethena became the highest-earning decentralized application (DApp) in the crypto market by offering investors an annual percentage yield (APY) of 67%.
While this exploit resulted in a significant loss, it is comparatively smaller in scale than some other crypto hacks. Just one day before, Prisma Finance experienced an over $11 million hack on March 28. Such hacks have become a longstanding issue in the crypto industry, which greatly affects investor trust. According to blockchain security firm Immunefi, a total of $200 million worth of crypto has been lost to both hacks and rug pulls in 2024 across 32 separate incidents up until February 29.
Comparing the figures, the loss of over $200 million represents a 15.4% increase compared to the loss of $173 million in digital assets during January and February 2023. To put it into perspective, a total of $1.8 billion was lost to crypto hacks and scammers in 2023, with 17% attributed to the North Korean Lazarus Group, as stated in a report by Immunefi on December 28.
The figures show that crypto hacks and scams are on the rise. It’s a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
I can’t believe the amount of money that has been lost to crypto hacks and scams over the years. It’s mind-blowing.
It’s impressive how Ethena Labs quickly became the highest-earning DApp. Hopefully, they can recover from this setback.