The Binance Smart Chain (BSC) had to temporarily pause because of a cross-chain bridge exploit.
BNB Chain tweeted from its official account it was pausing “due to irregular activity”. It confirmed later that the irregular activity was in fact a “potential exploit”. Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO, said the exploit on the cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, resulted in extra BNB. He asked all validators to temporarily suspend BSC. Binance apologized for the inconvenience.
Up to two million BSC tokens were targeted, as per initial token movements, by the hacker late Thursday. However, true losses may be much lower. The BNB Chain estimates that $100 million to $110 million in digital assets were moved off-chain with $7 million already frozen. The small sum of assets stolen underscores the upside of BNB’s gamble to halt the chain rather than risk more assets being exploited.
BSC coordinated a shutdown of the chain after recording problems with the BSC Token Hub protocol. BNB tokens had to be transferred from the Smart Chain token hub to a new address. And the address in question, according to data from DeBank, holds more than $500 million worth of crypto – with holdings in ETH, MATIC, and FTM among others. Binance said the network is still under maintenance. As such, it will suspend all deposits and withdrawals through the BNB chain (temporarily) until further updates.
The platform assured users that all funds are safe.
