BonqDAO Loses $120M to an Oracle Hack

In Brief

• Hackers exploited $120 million from the Bonq protocol.
• The community criticized the airdrop announced by the AllianceBlock team.
• As a result of hack, ALBT token is down by 63% and BEUR lost its peg by more than 40%

Hackers have stolen $120 million from BonqDAO by changing the price of the AllianceBlock (ALBT) token. The AllianceBlock devs are trying to compensate the community.

The DeFi industry has been prone to various attacks due to the loopholes present in the smart contract. As the industry is yet to mature, the DeFi protocols lack the required security optimization in their smart contract to build a solid hack-proof platform.

The BonqDAO is the latest victim of the DeFi hacks, as the hackers accessed one of the smart contracts to manipulate the price of the ALBT token.

Hackers Exploited $120m From BonqDAO
Bonq is an over-collateralized lending protocol that also issues a stablecoin pegged to Euro – Bonq Euro (BEUR).

The protocol explains on Twitter that hackers increased the ALBT price and minted large amounts of BEUR. They later swapped BEUR for other tokens and decreased the price of ALBT to almost zero.

The blockchain security firm PeckShield estimates that the hackers exploited $108 million worth of BEUR and $11 million worth of ALBT tokens. The AllianceBlock team announced the airdrop of new ALBT tokens to the affected users by taking a snapshot from just before the attack.

The team also halted the trading of ALBT on all centralized exchanges.

The Community Criticizes Announcement
The team initially mentioned that the addresses trading the token after the announcement would not be eligible for the compensation airdrop. The investors who panicked and sold the news heavily criticized this action from the team, citing it as unfair.

As a result, the team recently announced that they are considering the cases of users who bought/sold after the Telegram announcement to make it fair for those who sold the news. However, more details are yet to be released.

According to data from CoinMarketCap, the ALBT token is down 63% post-attack, whereas BEUR lost its EURO peg by more than 40%.

Disclaimer
BeInCrypto has reached out to company or individual involved in the story to get an official statement about the recent developments, but it has yet to hear back.