Harmony Protocol Succumbs To DeFi Exploit, $100 Million Stolen

Another decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol has fallen prey to an exploit. The Harmony protocol had been gaining popularity among DeFi users over the last year as the DeFi space bloomed. But it has now suffered the same fate as many protocols in the space. On Friday, the protocol announced that it has been the victim of a theft where the perpetrator(s) had made away with about $100 million in cryptocurrencies.

DeFi Platform Suffers Hack

The Harmony protocol announced via Twitter that the platform had been hacked. In the tweet, it explained that the theft had taken place on the Horizon bridge in the early hours of the morning. There was a total of $100 million, which had been siphoned off the network in Ethereum. The attacker had moved all of the funds to a single wallet and at the time of this writing, the funds are still sitting in the wallet with a balance of 85,867 ETH.

1/ The Harmony team has identified a theft occurring this morning on the Horizon bridge amounting to approx. $100MM. We have begun working with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the culprit and retrieve the stolen funds.

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— Harmony (@harmonyprotocol) June 23, 2022

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Following the exploit, Harmony had notified various exchanges to shut down the Horizon bridge. This means that users will not be able to carry out transactions on this bridge. However, it will also keep the attacker from being able to continue the exploit.

The protocol has assured the public that the team is working with authorities to identify those behind the theft. This includes working with the FBI and various cyber security firms according to a follow-up tweet that was posted by the protocol. 

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In another tweet, Harmony emphasized that the need for trustless decentralized bridges is higher now than ever. As such, it takes everyone to build out the technology.

Trustless decentralized bridges are important now more than ever. It's all-hands-on-deck as we continue to build these technologies.

Trustless bridges, such as our existing #Bitcoin bridge and upcoming trustless #Ethereum bridge, are paramount for decentralization and security.

— Harmony (@harmonyprotocol) June 24, 2022

The protocol has not been the only DeFi platform to succumb to an exploit this year. In the first quarter of the year alone, more than $1.2 billion was lost to DeFi protocols, and given that this is a relatively young space, more exploits are expected to happen. 

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The Ronin bridge hack is the largest hack so far in the history of DeFi, shattering the previous Poly Network record when a hacker made away with more than $600 million from the network. 

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