BNB Chain Halts Operations Following Massive Exploit

Reason to trust

Strict editorial policy that focuses on accuracy, relevance, and impartiality

Created by industry experts and meticulously reviewed

The highest standards in reporting and publishing

How Our News is Made

Strict editorial policy that focuses on accuracy, relevance, and impartiality

Ad discliamer

Morbi pretium leo et nisl aliquam mollis. Quisque arcu lorem, ultricies quis pellentesque nec, ullamcorper eu odio.

Binance’s signature Binance Smart Chain is the latest to suffer from an exploit, and the chain is “temporarily paused,” according to the official BNB Chain Twitter account and Binance’s CZ.

Early hours following the hack look to show 2M BNB, or over $500M at time of publishing, through the Binance Bridge. Furthermore, many have criticized the response around the matter. Let’s take a look at the details we know thus far.

Binance Bridge Can’t Avoid The ‘Bridge Problem’ 

One of the biggest issues around crypto vulnerabilities often seems to be bridges – where movement from one chain to another adds a layer of complexity that has proved to be a challenge. According to Paradigm researcher @samczsun (who provides a detailed thread on the the exploit), the BSC Token Hub bridge was tricked to send the attacker two transactions of 1M BNB each.

However, in early reports it seems that the tokens were not owned user tokens, but rather tokens not in existence before the exploit.

Binance's BNB token faced impacts from today's exploit. | Source: BNB-USD on TradingView.com

Criticism Around Halting The Chain

BSC reps went on to explain that they “coordinated with validators to temporarily suspend BSC,” which led to many critics emerging around the degree of centralization surrounding the chain. It seems that today’s hack is the second largest in history, and while Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao has assured holders that their funds are safe, there’s still a lot to discover here.

Featured image from Pixabay, Charts from TradingView.com
The writer of this content is not associated or affiliated with any of the parties mentioned in this article. This is not financial advice.

This op-ed represents the views of the author, and may not necessarily reflect the views of Bitcoinist. Bitcoinist is an advocate of creative and financial freedom alike.