The string of hacks is growing in tandem with market dynamics.
On 5 March, Binance-backed platform NFPrompt reported a hacker attack that resulted in the loss of some user and treasury funds.
NFPrompt (“non-replaceable prompts”) launched in 2023 as an artificial intelligence platform for creating images and trading them as NFTs.
Recently spun off into an independent business, venture capital firm Binance Labs has selected NFPrompt as one of 12 projects in the sixth phase of its incubation programme in September 2023.
The community-managed Tier 1 blockchain AirDAO suffered a hacker attack that resulted in the loss of 126.5 ETH (~$450,000) and 41.61 million AMB (~$512,000).
SlowMist analysts added that some of the stolen funds were sent to Binance and BitMart.
Founded in 2022, AirDAO is positioning itself as a community-driven Web3 ecosystem of decentralised applications based on the Ambrosus Network blockchain network with a native AMB token.
BONKbot’s Telegram trading bot BONKbot on the Solana network allegedly suffered a hacker attack that caused users to lose about $208,000. BONKbot put the blame on a “specific app” and some pointed to Solareum, another Solana-based Telegram bot. A few days after the incident, Solareum announced it was shutting down. The developers cited “insufficient funds, evolving market trends and a recent security breach.”
The bot’s team has already contacted law enforcers in an attempt to freeze the stolen funds if they make it to centralised exchanges.
The situation has caused confusion in the community as the nature of the vulnerability is not entirely clear. The number of affected users also remains unknown, with BONKbot claiming that only 0.1 per cent of their traders were affected, while some users admitted much higher values.
According to Immunefi research, fraud and hacker attacks caused $336 million in industry losses in the first quarter, with 100 per cent of the losses attributed to the DeFi sector.
