DeFi
DeFi lender UwU hacked for nearly $20 million in new exploit
UwU Lend, a decentralized lending platform, has become the latest victim of a malicious hack. According to blockchain security company Arkham, the lending protocol has seen $19.3 million stolen by bad actors.
Although the cause of piracy has not yet been identified, some users claim that the project’s founder is behind the attack.
UwU Lend loses $19.3 million
UwU Lend comes from the open source codes of AAVE v2, an Ethereum-based lending protocol. It offers a cohort of services, such as lending, borrowing, and staking. Users are offered 100% of the revenue generated by the platform, which is issued in the form of a revenue sharing token called UwU.
According to his official siteUwU Lend claims to have never been hacked since its creation in 2022. However, it joins long list of hacks flood the DeFi sector.
On-chain data shows that the bad actor carries the stolen funds across multiple wallet addresses. A crypto user who reported the exploit on blockchain explorer Etherscan declared that the bad actor used Curve LlamaLend as “exit liquidity” for the attack.
At the time of writing, the UwU Lend developer team recognized the attack and reassured users that action was being taken to recover the stolen funds.
“Protocol was paused just under an hour ago while the team investigates the situation. Please be assured that we were immediately informed of the situation and are taking all necessary measures, doing our best. Stay tuned for further updates,” the project team wrote.
Insider work?
In the absence of a post-mortem report identifying the cause of the attack, some users have accused the project’s founder as the mastermind behind the feat.
Michael Patryn, co-founder of a collapse of a Canadian crypto exchange called QuadrigaCX, launched UwU Lend in September 2022. He was also caught moving millions of dollars of ETH from Wonderland DAO, where he was treasurer. With his reappearance as the UwU team leader, Patryn is identified by a nickname, Sifu.
Due to its difficult past, some members of the community are suspicious that Sifu could be behind the loss of funds. However, there is no evidence to support these claims.