This bridge is the best connecting the two. ethereum solanaAn apparent hacker has caused more than $320,000,000 in losses to blockchains Wednesday afternoon.

DeFi is the one who made it. second-biggest exploit everJust after $600 million Poly Network crypto heistIt is the most significant attack on solana to date, and it is a competitor to ethereum.

Ethereum is the most widely used blockchain network. It is also a major player in DeFi. In DeFi smart contracts, programmable code pieces known as smart contract can be replaced by middlemen such banks or lawyers for certain business transactions. Because it is faster and cheaper than ethereum, solana has gained popularity.

Many cryptocurrency holders don’t operate within the blockchain ecosystem. Therefore, developers built cross-chain bridges so that users can send crypto from one chain to the other.

Wormhole is an protocol which allows you to transfer tokens and NFTs within solana or ethereum.

Wormhole developers confirmed the exploit via Wormhole’s Twitter account. They stated that the vulnerability is being fixed. “down for maintenance”It is also looking for a “potential exploit” The protocol’s official websiteIt is currently unavailable

CertiK’s analysis shows that an attacker has made at most $251,000,000 worth of bitcoin, almost $47million in solana and over $4 million in USDC. A stablecoin whose price is tied to the U.S. dollars.

Bridges like Wormhole work by having two smart contracts — one on each chain, according to Auston BunsenQuikNode is co-founded by, who provides infrastructure for blockchain developers and businesses. One smart contract was on solana while one was on ethereum in this instance. Wormhole, a bridge made of ethereum tokens, takes it and locks it into one contract, then issues another token on the other chain.

CertiK preliminary analysis has shown that the attacker took advantage of a flaw on the Wormhole Bridge’s solana side to create the 120,000 so-called wrapped ethereum coins for himself. Wrapped etherum tokens can be interoperable with all other blockchains, but they are pegged at the same value as the original coins. These tokens were used to claim the ethereum on the bridge’s ethereum side.

CertiK stated that the bridge was “essentially acting as an escrow services” prior to the exploit. It held a ratio of 1:1 ethereum: wrapped ethereum.

The report continued, “This exploit broke the 1:1 peg as there are now at most 93,750 less ETH kept as collateral.”

Wormhole states that ethereum is being added to the bridge “over the next hours”To ensure its wrapped ethereum tokens are backed up, however it isn’t clear from where they get the funds.

Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum previously made the caseBridges will cease to exist in crypto-ecosystem because of “fundamental limitations” regarding the security of bridges which hop between multiple “zones of sovereignty”.

CertiK’s post-mortem report on the incident noted that hackers are attracted to bridges which have hundreds of million dollars worth of assets. They can also multiply their attack vectors by being able to operate across more than one blockchain.

In recent months, crypto platforms were hit with a variety of high-value attacks.

Ronghui Gu, CertiK founder and co-founder said that the $320 million Wormhole Bridge hack highlights the increasing trend of attacks on blockchain protocols. This attack raises alarms about growing security concerns around the blockchain.