Wormhole, a communication bridge between Solana and other decentralized-finance blockchain networks, said on Thursday that "all funds are safe" after hackers stole more than $320 million in cryptocurrency in what is considered the fourth-largest crypto heist on record.
According to the project's tweet, the network was exploited for 120k wETH (wrapped Ether). They pledged to add Ether over the next several hours to ensure the wETH is backed one-for-one and get the network back up.
What is Wormhole?
Wormhole Portal is a web-based application, also known as a blockchain “bridge”, that allows users to convert one form of cryptocurrency into another.
Bridge portals use “smart contracts” on the Ethereum blockchain to convert an input cryptocurrency into a temporary internal token, which they later convert into the user’s desired output cryptocurrency.
The attacker is believed to have exploited this process to trick the Wormhole project into releasing Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL) coins far beyond the input they initially provided.
According to reports, the attacker stole crypto-assets worth $322.8 million at the time of the attack, and which have depreciated to $294 million due to price fluctuations following news of the hack.
