QANplatform faces a $1M Bridge Hack, QANX token plummets by 90%

The well-known quantum-resistant layer 1 blockchain QANplatform recently witnessed a hack, where the attacker stole $1 million. Since the hack, the price of its native QANX coin has dropped by more than 90%.

The bridge smart contract that is offline was hacked and the attacker managed to withdraw tokens.

Please don’t perform any transactions related to the QANX token.

We are investigating the issue and going to keep you updated.

— QANplatform (@QANplatform) October 11, 2022

On Tuesday at 05:01 EST, QANplatform stated that its smart contract bridge had been compromised and that the hacker had already withdrawn tokens. At 8:17 a.m. and 9:40 a.m. UTC, there were two large withdrawals from the bridge, as indicated by Etherscan data.

The attacker drained a total of 1.46 billion QANX tokens worth approximately $1 million. This token amount constituted over half of the existing quantity of 3.3 billion tokens.

Clearly, the price of the coin has been greatly influenced by the extraction of such a large portion of the supply concurrently. The attacker has already exchanged more than 30% of his stolen tokens for ETH via Uniswap, and the token price has fallen by 94.51%, at the time of writing. From its record high in November, it is down by over 99%.

A few hours later, QANplatform made a video statement outlining how the method used to drain the bridge’s cash is “widely used across the whole blockchain ecosystem” and affects many chains.

“It is not related to QAN’s smart contracts or core technology in any way.” 

One of the addresses used in the attack has been connected to prior phishing attacks, according to on-chain statistics. Following this, trading, deposits, and withdrawals for QANX were halted on all centralized exchanges, and the team warned holders from engaging in any QANX-related activities.

QANplatform offers 72 hours to hacker

QANplatform team has given 72 hours to the hacker to contact the representatives to avoid facing legal charges. Teams have previously agreed to drop charges and let hackers keep a small bounty in exchange for the majority of the stolen funds in cryptocurrency hack cases.

The recent cross-chain bridge hack on BNB Chain resulted in a loss of more over $500 million last week, prompting Binance validators to collaborate and momentarily halt the BNB chain. Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge was the target of the biggest DeFi breach ever in March 2022, which lost $600 million in ETH and USDC.