Maiar Hack: Decentralized Crypto Exchange Offline After Hacker robs $113M

Maiar exchange developers took it offline and claim that they have recovered the stolen funds.

Hackers found a flaw in Mair’s decentralized crypto exchange and exploited it to steal approximately $113 million.

On Sunday, the founder and CEO of decentralized exchange (DEX) Maiar which bills itself as “the future of money” – and the Elrond blockchain that it runs on, announced on Twitter that he and his team were in the process of “investigating a set of suspicious activities on the Maiar DEX.” It later turned out that the suspicious activities were those of hackers. 

Later on Monday, Mincu published a Twitter thread detailing the incident. In the thread, Mincu announced that  “a bug was discovered and exploited,” and that the team was now working on the recovery of the DEX and had successfully patched the bug. After discovering the hack, the developers took the exchange offline. 

By the time the developers took the website offline, the hackers had already done plenty of damage. According to a blockchain researcher who goes by Foudres, the hacker stole around 1,650,000 EGLD, the native token of the Elrond blockchain, worth about $113 million at the time of the hack. The hackers used three wallets to drain funds from the exchange and were able to sell 800,000 EGLD, which caused the price of EGLD on the Maiar exchange to plunge from $76 to $5.

In a Tweet, Mincu claimed that “most exploited funds have been either recovered in full or will be covered by the Elrond Foundation. This means funds are safe, & all funds will be available in full at the restart.” Mincu said that swaps on the exchange will restart once their price matches the EGLD price on Binance, which is currently at $67.72. 

It is still unclear how the Maiar team was able to recover the funds, or exactly how the hack happened. Mincu referenced not one, but two “main net” upgrades, which typically refers to rolling out a new blockchain version. 

The hack on Maiar is yet another incident in a seemingly endless series of hacks in the crypto world. As of early May, hackers and scammers have robbed $1.6 billion in crypto, according to data from blockchain cybersecurity company CertiK.

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