ANOTHER CRYPTO HACK, NOMAD BRIDGE SUFFERS A $200M LOSS
While many crypto users aren’t fully aware of Bridging as it pertains to Cryptocurrency tokens and blockchains, a few others are using it to full capacity and taking on the advantages that come with bridging Cryptocurrencies across several chains. While a few others are seeking ways to exploit other individuals and firms via malicious activities, still using these bridges.
Another crypto bridge had been exploited for approximately $200 million worth of assets. The question one might ask is “how”. Before we give answers, let’s first answers frequently asked questions like, what is bridging, how cross-chain bridging work, and various bridges that exist in the Cryptocurrency space.
WHAT IS BRIDGING
Bridging In Blockchain is the act of creating a connection between two Blockchains, as the name implies, building a bridge between two Blockchains for the sole purpose of interacting with both chains. Let’s initiate an instance: A user owns SOL and wants to carry out some form of transactions or typically any form of interaction with another Blockchain, say, Ethereum. This user can simply bridge by using a bridge network and not require selling his SOL tokens. This very feature of the Blockchain has created interoperability, which is a fundamental advantage of using Blockchain.
Different Bridges that exist include but aren’t limited to these:
•cBRIDGE
•RenBridge
• Wormhole
•NOMAD Bridge
NOMAD BRIDGE
As of the end of July, Nomad closed off at a Total Value Locked(TVL) sum of $190 million, the bridge was gradually drained of this sum until it hit zero. Many crypto users monitored this decline as it happened. The bridge had a bulk of its exploited funds in USDC, WBTC, and WETH.
About six different tokens were siphoned, which was a rough sum of almost st $100 million.
At about 10:37 pm, August 1 a tweet surfaced on Twitter by a user @spreekaway, who is possibly a user of the Nomad Bridge. In the tweet, the user was quite unsure if the multichain bridge was rugged. This tagged along a photo proof of draining TVL alongside the timestamps.
This is a hard hit on the Nomad multichain bridge, which conducted a fundraising round about four months ago and was able to generate a Total sum of $22 million dollars. Among some seed investors of this bridge are Coinbase Venture, Polygon, and OpenSea among others.
This doesn’t mean it’s the first of its kind, the DeFi space and ecosystem at large have suffered these vulnerabilities and one might be forced to ask “how secure is cryptography” and DeFi. Earlier in 2022, a prominent Blockchain bridge; Wormhole traded a similar part. The wormhole was hugely affected by one of the biggest losses recorded since the inception of DeFi. It lost over $300 million worth of funds.
