Following the hack of 2 million NBBs, NBB Smart Chain teams are considering bounties of up to 10% of stolen funds. At the same time, the blockchain shutdown raises questions about the decentralisation of the network.
The NBB Smart Chain gives an update on the hack
After the impressive and partially contained hack, the NBB Smart Chain has issued a statement to clarify the matter. Although the “post-mortem details” are still to come, the blockchain teams were initially keen to apologise to the community for the inconvenience caused and thanked all those involved in limiting the damage.
The NBB Smart Chain teams then detailed the points that were being considered, in particular what should or should not be done with the stolen funds.
Thus, a system of bonuses must be put in place on two levels. Firstly, a call for “whitehat” hackers will be made, with rewards of up to one million dollars for significant bugs.
Secondly, the hacker now has a bounty ‘over his head’. Up to 10% of the total funds recovered can be paid out to anyone who can identify the hacker(s). These bounties could therefore amount to millions of dollars. All these proposals will be put to a vote by the governance.
There are, in fact, several hundred million dollars tied up in the attacker’s address at the moment:
BSC Token Hub bridge attacker address
For their part, the SlowMist teams, specialising in blockchain security, were able to draw up an inventory of the funds, which were extracted from the NBB Chain. In total, there are about 110 million dollars spread over different networks:
Since the $BNB Chain was suspended, the ~$430M on it cannot be transferred any further.
In total, over $110M was moved off the BNB Chain
Frozen: ~6,5M $USDT
Supplied to lending pools: ~$37.5M
Borrowed: ~$16.5M
Still have access to: $83.3M pic.twitter.com/zxieESGblL– SlowMist (@SlowMist_Team) October 7, 2022
Stopping a channel: a questionable possibility
In the introduction to its press release, the NBB Smart Chain made contradictory statements. The notion of “decentralised chains” is mentioned, but it is also specified that the network has only 26 active validators:
Decentralised chains are not designed to be stopped, but by contacting the community validators one by one, we were able to prevent the incident from spreading. It was not that easy, as BNB Smart Chain currently has 26 active validators and 44 in total in different time zones. “
So this decentralisation is relative. If the possibility of influencing to such a degree a supposedly immutable network has, in this case, limited a disaster that the ecosystem could easily have done without, it nevertheless raises questions.
Indeed, it shows that the network is not impartial. If it was possible to act in such a way for a good cause, this proves that it would be possible to do so in the future for more questionable decisions. One example is the subject of regulation, particularly through the controversies surrounding the Tornado Cash case.
