The Shido blockchain suffered a severe setback due to a cybersecurity breach, resulting in the theft of 4.3 billion Shido tokens. This amounted to half of its total circulating supply and was valued at $35 million prior to the market downturn.
The Shido token’s value took a dramatic dive, plummeting 94% in just half an hour.
Massive Security Breach Leads to Significant Losses
Blockchain security company PeckShield unveiled that the breach led to the theft of over 4.3 billion Shido tokens, nearly 50% of its available supply, initially worth around $35 million.
The vulnerability was exposed by PeckShield in a Feb. 29 social media update, revealing that an intruder had compromised Shido’s Ethereum staking contract. This breach allowed the hacker to relocate the contract to a different address, which was later modified to include a covert function that facilitated the unauthorized withdrawal of tokens.
Shido, which is built on Ethereum as an ERC-20 token, allows users to stake their tokens on its decentralized exchange (DEX) for an annual return of 8%. The project was on the brink of its mainnet launch, scheduled to be announced the week after the hack.
Following the incident, there has been a slight recovery in Shido’s token price, which is now at $0.002056, marking a 74.6% decrease in the past day, as per CoinGecko.
Tracing the Hacker’s Financial Path
On-chain detective ZachXBT revealed that the hacker’s initial funding came through Layerswap, a cross-chain platform, before moving through the Arbitrum blockchain.
The detective also indicated having pinpointed the identity of the person behind the initial fund transfer to the hacker. However, it appears this individual too was hacked, with their funds quickly diverted for the exploit.
Another analyst, “Wazz,” highlighted the sophisticated funding strategy of the exploit, involving the use of several bridges to execute the theft. Despite efforts to follow the stolen funds, the trail eventually went cold. This has led to advisories against buying Shido tokens while the perpetrator still possesses a significant amount of them.