Heco bridge appears to have been drained of $86.6 million
Quick Take
- The Heco bridge appears to have been drained, while further funds may have been taken from crypto exchange HTX.
- The funds have already been sold on decentralized exchanges.
Unexpected crypto flows suggest an exploit involving the Heco bridge, a bridge used for moving funds between Ethereum and the Heco Chain — a blockchain set up by the HTX exchange.
Initial estimates suggest that $86.6 million was taken from the Heco bridge, according to Wintermute Head of Research Igor Igamberdiev and blockchain analysts PeckShield. The funds were immediately sent to decentralized exchanges and sold for other tokens.
"We suspect the bridge may be exploited or rugpulled," said PeckShield.
Igamberdiev estimates that there was an additional exploit of the crypto exchange HTX, citing suspicious transfers of $23.4 million. He said these transactions shared the same patterns as those in the Heco bridge exploit and occurred shortly afterward. HTX has also started moving funds from a different hot wallet to what's labelled as a recovery wallet.
HTX seems to have stopped processing withdrawals from the exchange as of around 06:26 ET, according to Arkham data.
The Block reached out to HTX and Heco Chain for comment.
Updated with more details about HTX.
Disclaimer: Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and CEO of Wintermute, previously sat on The Block's board of directors from April 2023 to early November 2023 and remains a minority shareholder.
© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
