Jacquelyn Melinek

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 <ul>
 <li>The total value locked on Solana fell about 12.3% from $8.55 billion Wednesday to $7.5 billion Thursday, according to DeFiLlama data</li>
 <li>The ether was exploited from a smart contract, not “taken” from an Ethereum address, a Wormhole admin said</li>
 </ul>
 
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Wormhole’s parent company has dug the DeFi protocol out of a $320 million hole.



Jump Crypto replaced all 120,000 ether Wormhole lost Wednesday in the <a href="https://defiyield.app/rekt-database" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">second biggest decentralized finance hack</a> to date, a spokesperson told Blockworks. The decision by Jump Crypto, which is owned by Jump Trading, to replenish the missing funds may have headed off long-term damage to the Solana blockchain.



The total value locked (TVL) on Solana fell about 12.3% from $8.55 billion Wednesday to $7.5 billion Thursday, according to DeFi Llama <a href="https://defillama.com/chain/Solana?currency=USD" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a>.



“[Jump Crypto] believes in a multichain future and that [Wormhole] is essential infrastructure,” the company wrote in a tweet. “That’s why we replaced 120k ETH to make community members whole and support Wormhole now as it continues to develop.”



Wormhole is one of the largest cross-chain bridges between Solana and other blockchains. It has over $1 billion in TVL and supports six blockchains: Terra, Solana, Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche and Polygon.



Its portal shut down for a few hours Wednesday as the company worked to <a href="https://twitter.com/wormholecrypto/status/1489233259808571401?s=20&amp;t=jTmhWwG1o9ca_pb3pgzw4g" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">patch the network vulnerability</a>.



By 8:30 am ET Thursday, the portal’s token bridge was again operational.&nbsp;



“All wETH has been restored,” a Wormhole admin, who goes by the username d231d, wrote in its Telegram group Wednesday.



The hacker’s Ethereum address hasn&#8217;t been used since transferring the tokens to their wallet,&nbsp;according to Etherscan <a href="https://etherscan.io/address/0x629e7da20197a5429d30da36e77d06cdf796b71a#internaltx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a>.



The ether was exploited from a smart contract, not “taken” from an Ethereum address, the admin said. The exploit took place over three different transactions, Blockworks <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/in-second-largest-defi-hack-ever-blockchain-bridge-loses-320m-ether/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>.



When a user transfers assets between blockchains, the bridge steps in to lock the transaction and mint a wrapped version, such as wrapped ether (wETH), to its final chain.



Etherscan added a disclaimer to the address’ page: “There have been reports that this address is involved in the Wormhole network <a href="https://twitter.com/wormholecrypto/status/1489001949881978883" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">exploit</a>. Please proceed with caution.”



The protocol said it plans to release an in-depth report with further details “ASAP.”



Jump Crypto President Kanav Kariya said in a tweet that Wormhole would come out &#8220;stronger than ever.&#8221; 



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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Jump put up 120k of it’s own ETH because we believe in Wormhole and want to support it in this stage of its development. And we&#39;re going to come out stronger than ever Detailed incident report from Wormhole to come soon&mdash; Kanav Kariya 🦬 (@KariyaKanav) <a href="https://twitter.com/KariyaKanav/status/1489312871456649228?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 3, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Wormhole said an ether contract was filled and will ensure that all wETH is backed in a 1-to-1 ratio to ensure exchangeability with the native ether.



Wormhole sent an on-chain <a href="https://www.notifi.xyz/messages/1497" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">message</a> to the hacker after the exploit, offering a reward for the return of the tokens.



It is still unclear whether the exploiter responded. Neither the admin or protocol immediately returned a request for comment.



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