Hacker Exploits ApolloX Exchange; Here’s What Led to the Loss of 53 million APX Tokens

Decentralized crypto exchange ApolloX was reportedly exploited on June 8, as the platform stated that the hacker found a flaw in the platform’s Trading Rewards Contract.

The incident came to light when the DEX temporarily disabled the withdrawal function only to be resumed later on Wednesday.

ApolloX exploit details

According to ApolloX, the bad actor managed to accumulate 255 signatures, which allowed the withdrawal of 53 million APX tokens from the Withdrawal Contract. 

At the time of the attack, the value of the stolen tokens come close to $2.1 million. At the time of writing, ApolloX was down over 11% in the last 24 hours as per CoinMarketCap data.

That said, none of the loss is attributed to any users’ funds.

But due to the loophole in the exchange smart contract, “ApolloX team also made an emergency repurchase of 12,748,585 APX tokens,” after the hack, worth $600,000. The platform also assured that the “lost tokens will be made up for via APX earned from exchange trading fees.”

The incident also followed ApolloX’s announcement of seed funding from investors including Binance Labs and Kronos Research. The DEX secured an undisclosed amount in strategic investment to expand further into the Web3 vertical.

ApolloX Captain, Founder of ApolloX had noted, “Decentralized finance increasingly eats into the market share of centralized finance. Protocols are rapidly innovating in this competitive space as users demand more control, value, and accessibility.”

That said, ApolloX was also of the view that the ‘future of DAO will help to eliminate centralized leadership and empower the next generation of protocols.’

Meanwhile, the exchange has a Total Value Locked (TVL) of $12.4 million on DeFiLlama. On the technical front, InvestorsObserver has analyzed that ApolloX could maintain a weak short-term technical score of 4 with “recent price movement suggesting more bearish signals for traders.”

Threats amid the skyrocketing craze

 In a recently released report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), since the beginning of 2021, over 46,000 people have lost more than a billion dollars in crypto to scams.

Meanwhile, another report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has highlighted that Australians lost over AUD 113 million or $81.5 million to crypto-related scams between January 1 and May 1, 2022.

Anne Boden, the founder of a Goldman Sachs-backed digital bank Starling, called crypto “dangerous.” Boden said, “A lot of [crypto] wallets are being connected directly to payment schemes. This is a threat to the safety of our payment schemes around the world.”