$100 Million of Crypto Has Been Stolen From Harmony’s Blockchain Bridge
KEY POINTS
- Harmony’s Horizon Ethereum bridge was hacked on Thursday and approximately $100 million was stolen.
- Harmony announced in a series of tweets that its Bitcoin bridge was still secure.
- The company alerted other exchanges and froze the Horizon bridge to prevent more transactions from taking place.
Vulnerabilities in the crypto market continue to be exploited, most recently in the form of $100 million being stolen in a hack of a Harmony blockchain bridge.
In recent crypto news, hackers have stolen around $100 million in cryptocurrency from Harmony’s blockchain bridge. A blockchain bridge is a function that allows users to transfer their different types of cryptocurrencies from one blockchain to another. For example, you could send digital assets from Ethereum to Binance Smart Chain using a bridge.
$100 million added to the crypto hacks this year
Unfortunately for Harmony, it is supposed to be a company that specializes in bridges, and secure bridges, executing fast and final transactions, and focusing on the Ethereum network, although it supports Binance and three other chains. So it certainly was a blow on Thursday when reports surfaced that the Horizon Ethereum bridge had been hacked for $100 million.
And the blow extends beyond just Harmony, and into the rest of the crypto world, adding to the $1 billion already stolen this year, and revealing a weak spot in the decentralized, open-source, digital currency format.
How Harmony is responding
Upon news of the theft, Harmony announced on Twitter that it had notified other exchanges and stopped its Horizon bridge, to prevent more transactions from taking place while it focused on addressing the hack. The tweet read, “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.”
The company also revealed in the series of tweets that one individual account was suspected to be behind the heist. It also appears the hack was contained to the Horizon Ethereum bridge. The company added, “Note this does not impact the trustless BTC bridge; its funds and assets stored on decentralized vaults are safe at this time.”
Harmony’s Twitter thread also went on to assure users and followers that the company is all hands on deck as it continues the investigation and seeks to uncover the hacker and secure its bridges once again.
The unfortunate news also reflected on the price of the coin, which initially dipped around 10% and upon writing is down over 5% with a price of $0.024665, according to CoinMarketCap.
Our Research Expert
Katie Clinebell is a freelance content creator and digital marketing strategist for FinTech, blockchain, and crypto brands. She has created award-winning campaigns for Snapple and Tai Pei Frozen Asian Food and received an Adobe Academic Achievement Award for content about Olympic athletes.
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