Avalanche-based Vee Finance Lures Attacker with a Bounty Program, PNetwork Offers $1.5 Mln to Retrieve Stolen WBTC

This Monday, Avalanche-based lending protocol VEE Finance suffered an attack resulting in the loss of 8804.7 ETH and 213.93 BTC (worth about $27 million and $9.2 million at the rate of $3k ETH and $43k BTC, respectively), a total of more than $36 million.

Stablecoins on the platform are not affected by the attack, said the team.

Since then, the team has suspended the platform contracts to ensure the safety of users’ funds. The deposit and borrow function on the protocol has also been suspended.

In response, the token VEE dropped 46.3% in the past 24 hours to $0.10, up from the 0.0852 low put a few hours back, according to CoinGecko. Just three days back, the coin had put in a new all-time high at $0.854.

Announcement: Our platform may have been exploited. All services have been paused. We are investigating the cause, please follow our official accounts for latest update.
Thanks!

— vee.finance🔺 (@VeeFinance) September 20, 2021

The team noticed a number of abnormal transfers and then had its contract address attacked and the assets in it stolen, it said on Tuesday in explanation.

The official announcement maintained that the attacker has not yet transferred or processed the stolen assets, and they are trying to contact the attacker to recover the assets, saying, “We are taking and handling this incident seriously and will do our best to protect the interests of VEE Finance users.”

Dear Mr/Ms 0x**95BA,
This is VEE Finance team, we’re willing to launch a bounty program for the bug you identified. Please connect us via email or other contact you prefer.https://t.co/24R5XuSDDS pic.twitter.com/HwSNRi838g

— vee.finance🔺 (@VeeFinance) September 21, 2021

The same day, cross-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) project pNetwork reported losing 277 Bitcoin worth more than $12 million in an attack.

The attacker found a bug in the protocol’s code and targeted the pBTC token on Binance Smart Cain (BSC), stealing most of the collateral. PNetwork has offered a $1.5 million bounty to the hacker if they return the stolen funds.

Its token PNT recorded a 27.5% drop in its price. Currently trading at roughly $0.942, it is down 72% from its ATH of $3.37 from five months back.

Bridges to other blockchains weren’t affected, and all other funds in the network are “safe,” assured the team.

The company has identified the bug and fixed it, saying, “Finding vulnerabilities is part of the game, unfortunately, but we all want DeFi ecosystem to continue growing; returning funds is a step in that direction.”