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Largest DeFi Hack Yet? BadgerDAO Hack Results In Loss Of $120M+

There are high ceilings and low floors when it comes to crypto at times. Another hack came to life this week, and early reports have stated that the hack was a front-end compromise that led to users being tricked into approving unwanted transactions.

The news comes after a $35M DeFi hack of the Vee Finance protocol in recent months, and our team at NewsBTC reported around mid-year that crypto hacks and fraud were on pace for a record year.

This week’s BadgerDAO compromise is one of DeFi’s biggest yet.

BadgerDAO Hack: What We Know

The protocol cited “reports of unauthorized withdrawals of user funds” on late Wednesday, and proceeded to pause all smart contracts on the protocol:

Badger has received reports of unauthorized withdrawals of user funds.

As Badger engineers investigate this, all smart contracts have been paused to prevent further withdrawals.

Our investigation is ongoing and we will release further information as soon as possible.

— ₿adgerDAO 🦡 (@BadgerDAO) December 2, 2021

The BadgerDAO Token (BADGER), suffered a roughly 20% drop following the news of the hack. The platform is geared towards earning yield on bitcoin through various vaults.

Blockchain auditing firm PeckShield reported in the early hours on Thursday that the loss was north of $120M, spanning across over 2 BTC and over 150 ETH and going all the way across. However, a variety of assets were compromised during the hack. There were several big wallet losses, including a $5M swoop in one transaction. PeckShield has also released a list of transactions of the hacked funds, but also in the early Thursday hours stated that it “look(s) like good progress has been made. Fingers crossed!”

All things considered, the BADGER coin has held up relatively strong in light of this week’s hack. | Source: BADGER-USD on TradingView.com

Related Reading | Cardano Records Over 20 Million Transactions Ahead Of DEX Launches

Backlash & The Bigger Picture

As to be expected, the community reception to this news was less than ideal. Many Twitter replies from users noted their heartbreak from loss of funds. Some users even went on to suggest that the hack was a rug, given that it was seemingly a front-end attack.

Some further speculation came around a loss of funds from CeFi platform Celsius Network. However, thus far, the notes around Celsius seem to be only rumors with little substance. Only time will tell if more firm details come to light, or if Celsius makes a statement around the rumors.

Furthermore, many community members noted that the protocol “pausing” the smart contracts – as sensical as it is to protect user funds – goes against the principles of decentralization.

The continued emergence of insurance programs should bode well for DeFi in general. Our team at NewsBTC wishes only the best for the BadgerDAO protocol and it’s users.

Related Reading | Bitcoin And Omicron: Is Another Black Swan Brewing?

Featured image from Pexels, Charts from TradingView.com
The writer of this content is not associated or affiliated with any of the parties mentioned in this article. This is not financial advice.

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Nearly 1% Of Bitcoin Supply Is Now Wrapped In Ethereum

As wrapped Bitcoin approaches 189,000 BTC, the leading form of BTC on Ethereum now makes up for nearly 1% of the total supply of the cryptocurrency.

The total supply of WBTC was only around 4,000 coins last June, and today it is 47 times that. The gigantic growth has made the token the most popular form of Bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain.

WBTC touches the 1% mark | Source: Arcane Research

Overall, around 240,000 BTC has been tokenized into Ethereum protocols, of which 80% of the supply comprises of WBTC.

Why The Need For WBTC?

Tokenized BTC is becoming increasingly popular because the Bitcoin blockchain lacks some functionality that Ethereum does not.

As the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem is highly lucrative, it’s not surprising that investors are looking to get their hands on some of those yields.

WBTC isn’t the only BTC token on Ethereum. HBTC and RENBTC are some of the other examples. However, only WBTC is noticing such massive growth.

Below is a chart that visualizes the difference between WBTC and other tokens:

WBTC runs away from the rest | Source: Dune Analytics

As is clear from the chart, the competition of the token is largely stagnant, and drastically lesser in circulation, making up for only 20% of the total BTC supply on Ethereum.

Related Reading | Privacy Protection: The Future of DeFi

BadgerDAO

BadgerDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization that aims to build the products and infrastructure necessary to bring Bitcoin as collateral to other blockchains.

BadgerDAO has played an important part in Wrapped Bitcoin’s rise above its competition. The platform currently has $632 million in tokens locked in.

There are 13 vaults (called “setts”) in total on the website where you can deposit your tokens. A lot of these setts are liquidity pairs of WBTC and some other token. As a natural consequence, not all the value is locked under the wrapped token.

Nonetheless, there is a WBTC-only sett that is powered by Yearn Finance. The vault is now the biggest one on the platform with about $200 million tokens deposited.

Badger offers quite low price-to-earning ratio | Source: BadgerDAO

The above chart is from a BadgerDAO report that shows that they have one of the lowest price-to-earning ratios when compared to other DeFI businesses.

Related Reading | Top 10 DeFi Projects in Q2 2021

Bitcoin Price

In the past 30 days, the value of the cryptocurrency has dropped by 14%.

However, the general trend seems to have changed towards up in this past week of June so far. Below is a chart showing the variation in the cryptocurrency’s value:

BTC seems to be on a slight upward trend | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

As per a Voyager Digital survey, 87% of the respondents plan to buy more cryptocurrency in the coming months. 7 out of 10 respondents also believe market sentiment is bullish in the next three months.

However, other investors like Rich Bernstein feel that we are looking at a bearish market.

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¿Gaming for profit? This Ethereum based protocol enables it

Conceived as a bridge between Bitcoin and decentralized finance on Ethereum, Badger DAO protocol has expanded its investment strategies. As of today, users will be able to profit from yielding NFTs by participating in its new “game”.

Using one of Badger DAO’s products called Honeypot part I, participants can farm NFTs for staking bBadger or BAdger UNI tokens. Thus, they were allowed to obtain 1 of the 6 NFTs needed to get a prize of up to $30,000.

Now, the team behind the protocol launched “the most gamified experience to date”. Via a partnership with MEME, they have deployed Honeypot part II: Diamond Hands. With a mechanism intended to “level the playing field,” this second version of the product promises to deliver a portion of the prize to all holders of NFTs earned for playing.

In addition, the longer a player takes to redeem his NFT for a share of the winnings, the bigger his loot will be. This mechanic is intended to incentivize greater player participation and make them seek more rewards for playing longer.

Adding the power on the more common cards makes it so that the later you are to redeem the higher portion of the pool you will receive (shout out to tree.finance for the inspiration here). There is a massive disadvantage early but that dissipates as the final cards are being redeemed so, as they all become more scarce, the values of the different cards should converge.

Bitcoin on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain

The tokens that participants receive have “Redemption Power” (RP). The more of this a user accumulates with their NFT, the greater their reward. BadgerDAO team member Jon Tompkins said:

Redemption Power (RP) = relative portion of the pool you can claim with an NFT.  The lower the better! At any point until the last is NFT redeemed, lower RP = larger portion of redemption pool As redemptions occur and all NFTs become more scarce the RP disparity shrinks.

To obtain the NFTs, users must stake bDIGG tokens at the time of launch. Participants with more bDIGG staked will have more chances to receive the NFT.

Badger DAO is a protocol that operates on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, its vaults allow users to mint synthetic versions of Bitcoin to offer liquidity and receive rewards. According to DeFi Pulse, Badger DAO is the 12th largest protocol by total value locked (TVL) and contains 9,177 BTC “locked” on its platform.

BADGER’s price, the protocol’s native token, shows significant losses all across the board. The lowest losses are registered on the last day with 2.9% and the most pronounced in the monthly chart with losses of 34.8%.

Ethereum ETH Badger DAO
BADGE follows the general sentiment in the market for the 24-hour chart. Source: BADGERUSDT Tradingview