...and is definitely not an enormous grift that's pouring lighter fluid on our already smoldering planet.
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Agarwal sent a message to the thief shortly afterwards, offering a 10% "bounty" in exchange for the return of the rest of the funds. The attacker didn't seem to be interested, and in mid-January began tumbling the assets through the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer.
Samudai didn't seem to publicly acknowledge the theft, even though they've posted on Twitter a few times since then. The organization had raised $2.5 million in pre-seed capital in June 2022.
Poloniex was initially tight-lipped, posting on Twitter that they had "disabled for maintenance" an exchange wallet. Justin Sun later updated that they were investigating the "hack incident", and promised to "fully reimburse" the massive theft... somehow. He later tweeted that they would offer a 5% "bounty" to the hacker if they returned the funds within a week, threatening to "engage law enforcement" otherwise.
However, Near later decided it would not honor the redemption, accusing Wintermute of trying to pull off an arbitrage trade with the distressed asset. They also, somewhat curiously, claimed that the funds that were provided to Wintermute by the FTX estate may have been the tied to illegal activities. Aurora also described Wintermute's claims as "unfounded", and accused Wntermute of "tr[ying] to exploit the programme to profit from the purchase of distressed assets from the Alameda estate".
Wintermute has promised to "pursue all legal avenues" against the Near Foundation and Aurora Labs.
The scam was allegedly orchestrated by Subhash Sharma, who has not been apprehended. This particular fraud was uncovered in September, but has been ongoing since as long ago as 2018.
One also might think that a company embroiled in constant racism accusations might be cautious about screening its employees.
Neither of these things happened, though, and someone dug up vile tweets by Shpend Salihu, better known as NGBxShpend. Salihu resigned shortly after the tweets came to light, writing that they had "become a distraction from the [Bored Ape Yacht] Club and what we're all about."
The going theory is that event organizers skimped on lighting costs by using UV lights intended for sanitization, not for entertainment, causing burns to the eyes and skin. The eye condition, photokeratitis, is better known as "snow blindness" or "welder's flash", as it more typically affects people who haven't worn proper eye protection while welding or while exposed to sunlight reflected from ice and snow.
Several attendees reported having to seek emergency medical treatment after experiencing excruciating eye pain and vision problems, and tweet threads began circulating giving various other ApeFest attendees advice on recovering from the painful condition.
Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs belatedly issued a tweet two days after the incident, claiming only a small fraction of attendees had experienced "eye-related issues", but encouraging anyone with symptoms to "seek medical attention just in case".
Sentencing is scheduled for March 28, 2024, though scheduling could be affected by factors including whether the US decides to continue pursuing an additional five charges also set to be tried in March.
After pulling off the hack, the attacker received the usual flood of on-chain messages from people asking them to share some of their ill-gotten funds. Unusually, the attacker followed through, ultimately sharing 19.5 ETH (~$36,000) out of their spoils.
Onyx is far from the first Compound fork to fail to patch known vulnerabilities and suffer hacks as a result. Hacks stemming from known Compound bugs, such as the attacks on Rari Capital and Sonne Finance, have netted tens of millions of dollars apiece for attackers in the past.
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