Web3 infrastructure firm Jump Crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Oasis.app have successfully conducted a “counter exploit” on the Wormhole protocol hacker.
The team has managed to recover $225 million of digital assets and transferred them to a safe wallet. In February 2022, the Wormhole attack resulted in the exploitation of roughly $321 million worth of wrapped ETH (wETH) through a vulnerability in the protocol’s token bridge. The hacker has since moved the stolen funds through various Ethereum-based decentralized applications (DApps), such as Oasis.
The Oasis.app team confirmed that they had received an order from the High Court of England and Wales to retrieve certain assets related to the address associated with the Wormhole Exploit.
The retrieval was initiated through the Oasis Multisig and a court-authorized third party, identified as Jump Crypto in a report from Blockworks Research. Both vaults’ transaction history indicates that Oasis moved 120,695 wsETH and 3,213 rETH on Feb. 21 and placed them in wallets under Jump Crypto’s control. The hacker also had around $78 million debt in MakerDAO’s Dai DAI tickers down $1.00 stablecoin.
In this case, the Oasis.app team has demonstrated how a court-authorized third party can leverage blockchain technology to retrieve stolen assets. The successful retrieval of stolen assets can also help restore confidence in DeFi protocols, as many investors have lost millions of dollars in similar attacks.
The successful counter exploit by Jump Crypto and Oasis.app is a significant milestone in the world of DeFi as it showcases the importance of blockchain technology’s ability to recover stolen assets.
This incident also highlights the need for developers to prioritize security when building DeFi protocols to prevent similar attacks in the future.
