Skyward Finance Exploit Results In $3M Loss

According to reports, the hacker removed 1.1 million NEAR tokens from Skyward finance, which were worth $3 million at the time of publication.

According to reports, 1.1 million Near Protocol (NEAR $3.04) tokens—worth an estimated $3 at the time of publication—have apparently been stolen from Skyward Finance an initial DEX offering (IDO) platform that enables equitable token distribution for companies on the Near Protocol. Sanket Naikwadi, a community moderator for Aurora Lab, posted the information on Twitter. He claimed that the exploit was discovered by a member of the Near Protocol community who goes by the handle Nearscout.

Ref finance, a community-led multi-purpose decentralized finance (DeFi) platform built on the Near Protocol, and the Skyward team have been informed of the drain, per the chain of tweets on the vulnerable. The exploiter reportedly initiated the drain by buying lots of skyward tokens on Ref Finance, and “then redeemed it through Treasury on Skyward Finance,” where they appear to have “got lots of NEAR than what 1 SKYWARD was worth”.

Holders of SKYWARD Tokens are advised to exchange or redeem their tokens elsewhere and should stop communicating with the platform according to Naikwadi, who also noted that the “hacker has already withdrawn NEAR to lots of different wallets.”

The DeFi ecosystem appears to be experiencing an increase in exploits. October 2022 has been dubbed “the biggest month of the biggest year ever for hacker activity” by blockchain analytics company Chainalysis. On October 12, it was reported that Mango Markets, a DeFi exchange based in Solana, had lost $100 million worth of bitcoin, causing its token to fall by 52%. TempleDAO was defrauded of $2 million on the same day as the Mango Markets.