Solana Records Second Flash Loan Attack as Nirvana Losses $3.49M in Exploit
Solana Network was in for another flash loan attack. In the second wave of recorded attacks, this time, according to on-chain data, decentralized finance (DeFi) yield protocol Nirvana was the victim, and the attacker stole $3.5 million worth of assets.
The attacker executed the exploitation by taking a flash loan worth $10 million in USDC on the Solana-based lending platform, Solid Protocol. They mint Nirvana’s native token $ANA with borrowed amount.
The hacker did this by falsifying the price of Nirvana’s native token $ANA. As a result, they inflated the price of $ANA. That way, the chartered fund in the custody of the exploiter exceeded $10 million.
The exploiter swapped the fund which originally was worth $10 million in $ANA and deducted $3.49 million from Nirvana’s Treasury. In total, they carted away with $13.49 million in USDT,
The cyberpunk returned the borrowed $10 million USDC to Solend Protocol while transferring the $3.49 million exploit fund through Wormhole bridge into an Ethereum wallet.
The exploited fund was finally converted into DAI and is currently in the possession of the assailant.
Nirvana Breaks Silence
About 7 hours after the exploit, Nirvana made some comments about the exploit on Twitter, noting that, it will take action to track down the stolen fund. The company added that the fault was not from Solend, but was “an exploit of Nirvana’s program.”
At the same time, Solend remarked on the attack, noting that it was in touch with Nirvana to assist in tracking down the exploiter. They further noted that it was not affected by the attack.
ANA and NIRV Tokens Plunge
Emerging after the exploit, Nirvana’s native token $ANA tanked severely, with the asset dropping by 81%, bringing it to a current trading price of $1.71.Nirvana’s stablecoin $NIRV equally saw a serious downtrend, losing its 1:1 peg to the US dollar. At the time of writing, $NIRV traded at $0.18, accounting for over 90% loss.
