All withdrawals on Binance paused after a possible Ankr hack

The world of crypto has been receiving one bad news after another. The shocking debacle of the exchange FTX and its aftermath with BlockFi is still ongoing while another shocking news has come from Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. 

Binance is a major crypto exchange that handles a lot of high-value transactions. And now, on suspicion of a hack, all trading and transactions have been halted as of now. When such a big platform halts all withdrawals, it shakes investors’ trust and makes the lives of so many people difficult. Following potential attacks on Web3 operator Ankr and Hay, the cryptocurrency exchange has halted all withdrawals.

Possible hacks on Ankr and Hay. Initial analysis is developer private key was hacked, and the hacker updated the smart contract to a more malicious one. Binance paused withdrawals a few hrs ago. Also froze about $3m that hackers move to our CEX.

— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) December 2, 2022

The Ankr protocol has assets deposited worth about $123 million, as per its website. According to Ankr, it is reaching out to exchanges to halt transactions of the affected coins. A lot of news and reports are now coming out regarding the flaws and bugs that were existent on this platform. Ankr, a DeFi protocol that dubbed itself the first “node-as-a-service” platform, experienced a multi-million dollar hack because of a fault in its code that permitted limitless token production, according to CoinDesk. Is widely believed that this exposed the platform to many vulnerabilities. PeckShield Inc., a blockchain security expert, suggested on Twitter that the hacker may have generated enormous quantities of the token using a software flaw before quickly exchanging them for other currencies.

A hack of this scale poses a big challenge for the entire crypto industry as well as crypto investors. Everyone’s faith and patience are running out with each such event. One after another hack and lapse have added up to no less than $3 billion just in this calendar year of 2022. And this has become a record for such digital exploits.

Also read: Crypto Lender BlockFi files for bankruptcy post FTX collapse

The already struggling cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin face even more pressure in such situations. How many blowups will this industry be able to resiliently face, that is the question that remains to be answered. And only time can tell how long the cryptocurrency operates unregulated in light of such disasters.