Hackers stole over $600 million in cryptocurrency in 2021 from the Polynetwork platform, which translates to approximately $34 billion tokens. However, the stolen funds cannot be recovered due to the insufficient liquidity of Metis, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
The Metis platform clarified that it does not possess enough liquidity to exchange BNB and Busd, the currencies used by the hackers. Metis also assured its users that their funds were not affected by the attack. Furthermore, all METIS tokens acquired by the attackers have been blocked on the BNBChain Polynetwork and cannot be sold.
The head of Binance, as confirmed on Twitter, stated that the exchange is assisting Poly in resolving the issue. Simultaneously, the hackers are attempting to dispose of the tokens that can still be converted to cash. Lookonchain reported that approximately $800,000 worth of tokens has already been exchanged for ETH in order to maintain liquidity.
This is not the first time that Polynetwork has fallen victim to hacking. In August 2021, the project experienced a similar exploit resulting in the theft of $610 million worth of tokens. Poly requested assistance from the community to locate and stop the flow of assets. Notably, major players in the crypto industry, such as Tether, froze a portion of the stolen USDT equivalent to $33 million.
Six days after the attack, the hackers claimed that their intention was to assess the security of Polynetwork and return the tokens. They argued that their motive for the theft was to enhance the protocol’s protection against vulnerabilities.