Due to an issue on its cross-chain bridge, the blockchain of Binance was halted on October 6 with attackers stealing an estimated $100 million worth of cryptocurrency.
The momentary delay was initially reported by the BNB Chain’s official Twitter account as being caused by “irregular activity” on the blockchain, but it was quickly clarified to be due to a potential exploit. The blockchain was “under maintenance,” stopping all deposits and withdrawals, according to an update from Binance.
On-chain analytics revealed that claimed attackers allegedly used two million BNB, the chain’s native coin, with a market value of around $600 million, according to earlier Twitter rumors.
A BNB Chain developer later acknowledged the existence of the hack on Reddit and stated that the value of the attack is initially estimated to be between $100 million and $110 million, with about $7 million frozen.
While reassuring the public that its systems are controlled and customer assets are safe while it investigates the vulnerability, BNB Chain claimed that the hack, which was used on the BSC Token Hub, created “additional BNB.”
Before the formal disclosures, Twitter users conducted an initial on-chain analysis that revealed the attacker used the token hub to claim a reward of one million BNB before putting the remaining funds into the decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform Venus Protocol.
BNB Smart Chain (BSC), formerly known as Binance Smart Chain. Smart contracts and decentralized applications are supported (DApps). BSC coexists with the BNB Chain, formerly known as the Binance Chain. While the second one allows for a high transaction volume with a 3-second block time, the first one supports smart contracts. Together, the two blockchains make up Binance Chain.
The native cryptocurrency of BNB Beacon Chain, BNB, as well as BEP20 tokens is supported by BNB Smart Chain. A consensus known as proof-of-stake (PoS) is used in the blockchain. Users can stake BNB to become validators, to be more precise. Transaction fees will be paid to validators for each block that is verified.
