Is Blockchain Technology Really Safe? $142M Lost To Hacks And Exploits In February Raises Concerns

While blockchain technology is hailed as revolutionary, it is not immune to attacks, with the industry experiencing 15 incidents of hacks and exploits in February 2023, resulting in a total loss of $142 million, according to the REKT database.

What Happened: Among the affected platforms, the BNB Chain BNB/USD suffered the most, accounting for 50% of the incidents, dAapp and NFT data DappRadar said in a report.

Ethereum ETH/USD, Optimism OP/USD and Avalanche AVAX/USD followed with 16.7% and Polygon MATIC/USD accounted for 8% of the incidents.

Notably, 33% of the attacks occurred on decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

The most significant incident was the BonqDAO and AllianceBlock ALBT/USD hack, where attackers exploited a vulnerability in the BonqDAO smart contract, manipulating its price oracle to increase the WALBT price.

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The exploit allowed the attacker to mint over 100 million BEUR, which they then used to manipulate the WALBT price and liquidate multiple troves.

The attacker withdrew their gains, amounting to 113.8 million WALBT and 98 million BEUR, worth over $10 million.

The dumping of these tokens had a severe impact on their value, with WALBT dropping by more than 50% and BEUR dropping by 34%.

Why It Matters: Meanwhile, the blockchain industry experienced a slight slowdown in February 2023, with an average of 1.6 million daily Unique Active Wallets (dUAW) interacting with dapps contracts, a 10.54% decrease from January 2023.

However, Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Klaytn KLAY/USD were the top gainers in February, with Ethereum seeing an increase of 23.25%, reaching an average of 147,924 dUAW.

At the same time, some blockchains did not perform well, with Optimism experiencing a decrease of 67.52%, reaching an average of 15,602 dUAW.

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Photo: Golden Dayz via Shutterstock