Nomad Bridge is a cross-chain bridge that is designed to transfer digital assets among Ethereum Virtual Machine chains. The slogan of Nomad.xyz is "High security, low cost, and fast bridging.". Nomad operates on Ethereum, Evmos and Moonbeam blockchains.
Unfortunately, the bridge got rugged a couple of hours ago. The hackers accessed to WBTC, WETH, and USDC on the bridge, and the funds were stolen. The hackers drained WBTC and WETH at first. Then, $87M of USDC was targeted.
Nomad was Secure & Popular, though
First of all, it was audited by Quantstamp and the project had trusted products used by many people.
It's a security-first protocol as it is mentioned in the first page of the website 😶
The project also had some strong partnerships with well-reputed crypto service providers.
"Because Nomad provides a trust-minimized protocol for cross-chain messaging, there are potential applications that go well beyond just token bridging,” said Polygon co-founder Anurag Arjun in the press release
It seems like trust-minimized protocols may fail, as well.
Sad to admit the fact that, EVM blockchains using Nomad Messaging Protocol are in trouble with FUD on them.
MoonBeam is under maintenance:
Evmos and Moonbeam blockchains are going to be hurt as majority of the tokens used on the chains were bridged from Ethereum via Nomad.
It seems like sell-off has begun!
Check Coinmarketcap: MoonBeam
So far $45M Stolen; More to Come
Defiant news revealed that $45M worth of WBTC & WETH were already stolen. Besides, $80M worth of USDC coins were still at risk. It is also claimed that $165M worth of assets have been stolen so far.
Copy an old successful transaction and call it from the blockchain to your wallet. Boom! You got the assets 😶
So far the crypto market did not react to this hack case. However, when the crypto news platforms start mentioning the occasion, I think we will be having another blood bath because of the stolen BTC and ETH.
After the exploit of Ronin Bridge 🌉 , things were not going great for bridges. With Nomad hack, I believe the trust will be even lower for EVM multi-chain bridges.
If you want to follow the case, spreekaway on Twitter an shared informative flood about it. There is no "ordinary" day in crypto 🙄