A security researcher informed the crypto community about a vulnerability he found on Polkadot parachains. These vulnerabilities could have resulted in close to $200 million in losses for the community. The parachains affected were Moonbeam, Acala and Astar Network. These are three Ethereum-compatible parachains. If the vulnerability would have been exploited it could have affected a large number of users in these parachains.
Security Researcher Finds Vulnerability on Polkadot Parachains
According to a recent report released by The Block, a security researcher known as pwning.eth found a critical vulnerability on multiple Ethereum-compatible Polkadot parachains. Due to his efforts to make the whole crypto community secure, he was awarded a bounty of $1 million bounty.
The Block reported that the researcher found this vulnerability 6 months ago in June 2022. The bug was then reported and he was awarded a bounty of $1 million. The vulnerability could have allowed malicious parties to mint wrapped native tokens. This would have added additional selling pressure to cryptocurrencies, especially with Polkadot (DOT) during a bear market.
A representative of Immunefisaid about the bug:
“Pwning.eth found a bug that impacted the entire Polkadot ecosystem and would allow hackers to steal over $200 million across Moonbeam, Astar Network, and Acala. They were all vulnerable to a bug that could have allowed malicious users to mint wrapped native tokens.”
Let’s not forget that the cryptocurrency market was in a bear trend that pushed the price of most virtual currencies downwards. Two other issues in the crypto industry affected the prices of virtual currencies as well. The first one was related to the implosion of the Terra (LUNA) ecosystem and its stablecoin.
The second event was linked to the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange alongside the FTT virtual currency. Another large exploit or attack could have pushed Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies lower, even below the current levels. According to data shared by CoinGecko, Bitcoin is now being traded at close to $16,800 and it has a market capitalization of $324 billion.
DOT, the virtual currency linked to the Polkadot ecosystem, was traded without changes in the last hour. This shows that the recent report released by The Block didn’t have a large impact on the price of this virtual currency. DOT is currently the 13th largest digital asset in the world with a price of $4,67 per coin and a market capitalization of $5.43 billion.
If there would have been an attack on the Polkadot network, the price would have likely tanked. Additionally, we don’t know the effect that this could have had on the market. Everything depends on how other projects are connected to Polkadot and whether there could be a contagion effect or not.
Now, developers have to work during this bear market in order to create better and more secure products and services for users to get access to better services in the future. This is something that usually takes place during bear trends rather than when the bull market starts in the crypto industry.
