Decentralized finance protocol pNetwork recently fell victim to a hack resulting in the theft of more than $12 million worth of “Wrapped” Bitcoin. The project announced the theft of 277 BTC on September 19, attributing the breach to a vulnerability in its codebase. This incident occurred on the Binance Smart Chain, the same blockchain that was targeted in the historic $610 million Poly Network hack that took place in August.
pNetwork is a cross-chain project that supports multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, xDAI, EOS, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Telos, and Ultra. Wrapped tokens play a crucial role in increasing interoperability between different blockchains by enabling assets to move seamlessly across various networks.
Following the hack, pNetwork took to Twitter to inform the community about the breach and stated that the bug had only affected the pBTC on BSC, with other bridges remaining secure. The platform acknowledged the bug and announced that certain data bridges would remain closed until a fix was implemented.
In a surprising turn of events, pNetwork publicly offered the hacker a 12.5% bounty of the stolen funds in an attempt to recover the cryptocurrency. The platform also extended a $1.5 million bounty to the attacker for returning the funds, emphasizing the importance of maintaining trust within the DeFi ecosystem.
pNetwork is actively conducting an investigation into the incident and plans to release a detailed post-mortem report. Security remains a top priority for the platform, with bridges undergoing extensive reviews to prevent similar exploits in the future. As of the latest update, the Telos and EOS bridges have been restored with additional security measures in place, while the pUOS on Ultra bridge was unaffected and is now operational.
Moving forward, pNetwork is committed to gradually reactivating all other bridges while ensuring the security of its platform. Updates on the progress of the investigation and bridge reactivations will be shared with the community in due course. Stay tuned for further developments from pNetwork as they continue to navigate through this challenging situation.