The Wormhole blockchain token bridge has announced a $10 million bug bounty program to get DeFi on Solana back in shape. A hacker exploited the bridge earlier this month, resulting in $321 million in funds being stolen.
The Wormhole bug bounty program is the largest bounty for critical attacks ever and helped the Solana blockchain bridge double the number of wallets connected to the platform week over week as bounty hunters got to work.
As mentioned, Wormhole is a cross-chain platform that has attracted more than 10,290 wallets in the last seven days. That’s a stunning lift of over 700% when compared to the previous week. Those wallets completed over 21,000 transactions, a rise of more than 860%. Within two weeks from the exploit and the data points to Wormhole being back on track. However, there is an essential nuance to these figures.
The impact is much clearer to see using the Wormhole finance explorer. On the 11th, we see shy of 900 messages sent. By the 12th, the number had almost doubled to 1634. Then on the 12th, the day the bug bounty went live, we saw a massive spike in transactions on Solana. More than 18,000 in one day, a figure that represents almost half of all the transactions sent on Solana since Wormhole launched.
This could be the result of the bug bounty being delivered through Immunify. A company specializing in hosting bug bounties for blockchain projects by providing a platform to bring projects and hackers together so that hackers can report bugs responsibly and projects can fix vulnerabilities securely. Alternatively, the dapp could be attracting spam or bot traffic to inflate its stature on DappRadar. However, it’s more probable that the flow of empty transactions represents bug testing.
DappRadar is tracking seven Wormhole smart contracts, including the one highlighted below, which is the Wormhole Token Bridge contract. As mentioned, the bridge is where funds were exploited, so this is under heavy review. It also makes sense why we see inflated activity on the platform regarding wallets connecting and completing transactions. The falling transaction volume figure also makes sense, given that most of the transactions are empty.
Looking at Etherscan, we see thousands of transactions taking place with no values attached as those searching for bugs try out various methods and ways to unveil issues.
Although the metrics are peaking, it’s essential to understand the context of the peaks. We should expect these results for some time as more bounty hunters arrive looking to gain rewards. Moreover, it’s an excellent look for Wormhole to initiate a bug bounty and reinstall faith in the bridge. Secondly, the community appears hard at work, so the result should be a more stable and secure protocol.
The above does not constitute investment advice. The information given here is purely for informational purposes only. Please exercise due diligence and do your research. The writer holds ETH, BTC, AGIX, HEX, LINK, GRT, CRO, OMI, IMMUTABLE X, GALA, AVASTR, GMEE, CUBE, RADAR, FLOW, FTM, BNB, SPS, WRLD, ATOM, and ADA.
