Ethereum layer-2 community Scroll has delayed its chain finalization resulting from a probably exploitable bug inside its ecosystem.
On July 19, Rho Markets, a lending protocol on the blockchain, detected uncommon exercise and suspended operations to research.
Blockchain safety agency Cyvers Alert reported a hack of roughly $7.6 million on Rho Markets’ USDC and USDT swimming pools. The agency said:
“The foundation reason behind this incident appears to be an oracle entry management by a malicious actor!”
In line with DeBank’s dashboard, the exploiter’s pockets holds 2,203 ETH value $7.5 million and different property like Mantle’s MNT, Binance’s BNB, and Fantom’s FTM tokens.
In response, Scroll Community said that it was delaying its chain finalization. The venture said:
“After verifying with the Rho Markets workforce, we initiated a coordinated response. To totally assess the state of affairs, Scroll determined to briefly delay chain finalization. We confirmed that the exploit was application-specific.”
In the meantime, Scroll’s resolution sparked a debate concerning the community’s decentralization. Critics argue that delaying the chain contradicts decentralized principles, whereas supporters consider the transfer was obligatory to guard customers’ property.
Andy, the co-founder of The Rollup, stated:
“Till issues are near being maximally decentralized I feel pausing state finalization to forestall consumer funds being misplaced is correct. Particularly an ecosystem venture who’s attempting to innovate. I don’t know what this says about Scroll’s censorship resistance although.”
Whitehat hacker?
In the meantime, the attacker seems keen to return the stolen funds, resulting in speculations that the incident is likely to be a whitehat act.
On-chain messages shared by blockchain investigator ZachXBT present the attacker’s willingness to return the funds. The message reads:
“Howdy RHO workforce, our MEV bot profited out of your value oracle misconfiguration. We perceive the funds belong to customers and are keen to completely return them. However first, we wish you to confess it was a misconfiguration, not an exploit or hack. Additionally, please clarify how you’ll forestall this from occurring once more.”
Notably, on-chain information reveals the attacker’s tackle is linked to a number of centralized crypto exchanges, together with Binance, Gate, KuCoin, and OKX.