$100 Million Lost After Blockchain Bridge Suffers Exploit
Horizon, Harmony's bridge between various blockchain networks, suffered a hack that led to the loss of $100 million, according to an official announcement made by the project's team earlier this Friday.
Harmony’s team has contacted national authorities and blockchain forensics experts to investigate the theft.
1/ 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.
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— Harmony 💙 (@harmonyprotocol) June 23, 2022
The perpetrator’s addres currently holds Ethereum (ETH) worth approximately $104 million.
The price of Harmony (ONE) dropped nearly 9% on the news, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
The vulnerability of blockchain bridges has been a hot topic in the crypto industry for quite some time now. In January, Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, opined that they have “fundamental security limitations” in a Reddit post. These bridges often fall victim to hacker attacks due to their sophisticated technology.
READ MORE: USDC Issuer Launches Euro-Backed Stablecoin
The Ronin sidechain, which powers the online video game Axie Infinity, suffered a $600 million hack in late March, which is believed to be one of the biggest hacks in the world of decentralized finance. It later emerged that the theft was orchestrated by North Korean hackers.
In February, hackers also took over the Wormhole Bridge, stealing over $300 million worth of cryptocurrency.
According to data provided by Norway-based Dune Analytics, Ethereum bridges’ TVL is around $11.7 billion with nearly 25,000 unique depositors.
Alexander Stefanov
Reporter at CoinsPress
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
