Ocean paused contract after part of $8.6M KuCoin hack tokens being dumped

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Last Updated on 27 September 2020 by CryptoTips.eu

Ocean Protocol announced that it has paused their OCEAN smart contract following the hack of the KuCoin exchange. Ocean Protocol, which prides itself as a decentralized Ocean data sharing network, announced this on its twitter page.

This has brought criticism from the crypto community with many surprised that the decentralized platform could embark on what is essentially a centralized move.

KuCoin suffered a hack attack between September 25 and 26 with the hackers stealing about $150 million worth of tokens from the exchange. Part of the stolen tokens included about 21 million Ocean tokens worth around $8.6 million.

KuCoin reached out to the affected blockchain token projects and Ocean Protocol developers decided to pause the Ocean smart contract. This was to protect other Ocean token holders according to the platform.

As a first action to protect Ocean token holders, we have paused the OCEAN contract. We will update the community with more information in the coming hours.

This decision taken by Ocean Protocol is a result of an OCEAN dump by the hackers. The hackers took about 200,000 out of the 20 million stolen Ocean tokens and swapped this in chunks of 10,000 Ocean on the Uniswap exchange.

This sudden sale caused a ripple effect, with the Ocean Protocol price reducing by about 10%. It is uncertain what the hackers intend to do with the remaining 18 million tokens in their possession.

However it would be difficult for the hacker to move the tokens, because the smart contract is paused. Furthermore with the details of the stolen money on the blockchain several security firms are monitoring the transactions.

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Tether recently froze about $20 million USDT lying in the hackers wallet and this policy could be adopted by other centralized currencies. Despite, this would be the best solution to track the hackers and return the assets to the rightful owners.

KuCoin’s hack is a major blow for the exchange that has been waxing strong in recent months. It reminds of the initial days within the crypto space when hackers carted away millions of tokens from exchanges. They were even celebrating their third anniversary.