Nomad Cross-Chain Bridge Drained by Over $150 Million

Nomad has suffered an exploit resulting in the loss of up to US$190 million worth of crypto assets. Nearly the entire fund has been drained from the bridge, leaving only US$651.54 left in the wallet:

Nomad Still Investigating

Nomad, a token bridge that allows transfers of tokens between the Avalanche, Ethereum, Evmos, Milkomeda C1 and Moonbeam blockchains, is still investigating the incident. Some of the funds lost in the attack were taken by so-called “white hat friends” who removed the funds with the intention of safeguarding them.

The first transaction came at 9:32 pm UTC when someone managed to remove 100 Wrapped Bitcoin tokens, worth about US$2.3 million, with holdings of Wrapped Ether and the USDC stablecoin also subsequently affected.

It was later confirmed by security firm PeckShield that as much as US$190 million worth of cryptocurrencies were taken. Blockchain data suggests that transactions may have been constructed to make it appear that multiple actors were involved:

Crypto Bridges Security Remains a Concern

In January this year, cross-chain protocol ‘Multichain’ reported an attack in which hackers managed to exploit various vulnerabilities in the protocol, stealing over US$1 million. When the Multichain team announced the hack, it prompted attackers to steal more funds, raising the total amount lost to roughly US$3 million.

In June, Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge finally re-opened after losing US$625 million in a similar attack. Victims were said to have been fully compensated.