Another Fantom Hack? FTM Slumps 15% After DEX Attack

Fantom (FTM), the native token on the eponymous blockchain, fell sharply after one of its largest DeFi exchanges (DEX) was hit with a hack.

FTM slumped over 15% in the past 24 hours, and is now trading at nine-month lows of $0.322552. Saturday’s losses have now seen the token more than halve in value this week, in the wake of a crippling crypto crash.

SpiritSwap, one of Fantom’s biggest DeFi exchanges, said its platform was compromised. The platform said about $18,000 was stolen, although it had to cease operations to prevent further theft.

SpiritSwap is still not processing transactions, as of press time.

Fourth Fantom hack in three months

While the scale of the attack on SpiritSwap appears to be limited, it is Fantom’s fourth major hack in the past three months. In April, Deus Finance was attacked in flash loan exploit that cost the platform over $13 million.

Deus was also exploited in March. Prior to that, another FTM-based protocol, Fantasm, lost $2.6 million in an exploit.

The string of attacks had severely undermined investor confidence in FTM, with the token now trading down 86% so far in 2022. Like its price reaction on Saturday, FTM has logged steep losses on every hack.

SpiritSwap hack part of broader attack

SpiritSwap was far from the only project attacked this week. A vulnerability in domain hosting  platform Godaddy appears to have compromised several major crypto projects.

Of these, Polygon-based DEX QuickSwap was among the more notable casualties. The exchange has now suspended swaps to prevent any more funds from being stolen. But it said user funds and liquidity pools are safe.

The full extent of funds stolen is currently unclear. Given that several crypto projects use Godaddy, the entire scope of the attack is currently unknown.

Speculation is that hacker might have used Godaddy’s account recovery method to hack accounts of multiple defi websites. I am hearing that even Etherscan might be compromised.

-Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal

On Friday, several other major crypto platforms were also attacked in a phishing attempt. CoinGecko, EtherScan and Dextools all warned users against malicious popups encouraging them to connect their wallets.

With more than five years of experience covering global financial markets, Ambar intends to leverage this knowledge towards the rapidly expanding world of crypto and DeFi. His interest lies chiefly in finding how geopolitical developments can impact crypto markets, and what that could mean for your bitcoin holdings. When he isn’t trawling through the web for the latest breaking news, you can find him playing videogames or watching Seinfeld reruns.
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