en.cryptonomist.ch
The Curve Finance (CRV) token, following yesterday’s network security exploit, saw a 500% rise on the South Korean crypto-exchange Bithumb. This is not reflected in the CRV/USD pairs listed on Western crypto-exchanges, which instead see CRV’s price weaker.
Curve Finance (CRV): +500% in South Korean crypto-exchange Bithumb
After a major security exploit addressed by Curve Finance yesterday in the South Korean crypto-exchange Bithumb, the price of CRV saw a +500% pump.
Specifically, it was the CRV/KRW pair that saw the price rise. In fact, for CRV/USD pairs listed mainly on Western crypto-exchanges, no price increase occurred.
This means that only the price of CRV denominated in Korean won (KRW) has risen sharply.
At the time of writing, Bithumb’s CRV/KRW pair has risen to KRW 5,565 ($4.36), an increase of more than 500% in 24 hours.
However, the present rise has not been recorded on Western crypto-exchanges, which, on the contrary, have recorded for the Curve DAO token, a 12% drop to $0.64 in the last 24 hours.
The $70 million hacker attack on the platform: what happened?
On Sunday 30 July, Curve Finance‘s DeFi protocol saw as many as five cyber attacks, with crypto hack damage estimated at $70 million.
The vulnerabilities exploited by the attackers are from versions 0.2.15, 0.2.16 and 0.3.0, of the Vyper programming language. This could also mean that all DeFi projects using those versions of Vyper are at risk of being hacked.
Alerting its own community to the incident was Curve’s official Twitter profile.
In a knee-jerk reaction, the price of dollar-denominated CRV plummeted more than 15%, threatening the liquidity of a significant borrowed position on Aave and increasing the risk of market-wide contagion.
However, from what has emerged in recent hours, it also appears that a white hat hacker rescued 2,879 ETH ($5.4 million) of the drained funds.
Curve Finance (CRV): the backbone of DeFi
CRV is the native token of the decentralized exchange (DEX), based on Ethereum, and designed for exchanging stablecoins. And indeed, for many, Curve is regarded as the backbone of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.
Among the many there is also Justin Sun, CEO of Tron, who wanted to post his thoughts on the matter on Twitter.
Curve is an essential DeFi infrastructure for the blockchain industry. Our thoughts are with the team and users affected. As a community, let's support and strengthen the security measures to protect our decentralized ecosystem. We are here to support! 🤝
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) July 31, 2023
In contrast, Singapore-based crypto-exchange Upbit had to temporarily suspend trading of the CRV token just after the exploit. Here’s what Upbit’s announcement says:
“Today, certain vulnerabilities have been discovered in some of the stablecoin pools associated with Curve (CRV). As a result, CRV is currently experiencing significant volatility. We advise exercising caution when considering any investments related to CRV. Additionally, to ensure the safety of digital asset transactions, we have temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals for CRV.”