Crypto Takes a New Hit as Thousands of Solana Wallets Hacked
Hackers targeted the Solana ecosystem early Wednesday with thousands of wallets affected in the latest hit to the cryptocurrency market after bridge protocol Nomad was attacked at the start of the week.
Estimates of the damage vary. Just over $5.2 million in cryptoassets have been stolen so far from more than 7,900 Solana wallets, according to blockchain forensics firm Elliptic. Security company PeckShield said four Solana wallet addresses drained approximately $8 million from victims.
“The root cause is still not clear,” Elliptic's co-founder Tom Robinson said. “It appears to be due to a flaw in certain wallet software, rather than in the Solana blockchain itself.”
The attack sent Solana's SOL token down as much as 7.3% to $38.40 in early trading on Wednesday, its lowest in a week. Bitcoin rose 1.3% to $23,327.
The exploit affected users of a digital crypto wallet made by Slope Finance, according to a tweet sent Wednesday afternoon by Solana Status, a Twitter account managed by the Solana Foundation.
“There is no evidence the Solana protocol or its cryptography was compromised,” the tweet said.
Slope confirmed in an official statement that a group of its wallets had been affected and said that its own founders and staff had lost funds. The startup, which raised $8 million in February in a seed funding round led by Solana Ventures and Jump Crypto, is conducting its own investigation into the cause of the hack.
Crypto projects are proving a rich vein for hackers and the industry has suffered numerous attacks this year. Solana's woes come days after Nomad -- a bridge protocol for transferring crypto tokens across different blockchains -- lost close to $200 million in a security exploit on Monday. More than $1 billion has
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