Wintermute, one of the biggest cryptocurrency market makers, recently lost over 160 million dollars to a DeFi hack. The details about the breach have not been released, but it has been confirmed to attack 90 assets.
The company’s Chief Executive & Founder, Evgeny Gaevoy, discussed the breach in a string of tweets. Gaevoy confirmed that the firm had faced disruption in its decentralized finance operations.
However, the CeFi (centralized finance) and over-the-counter verticals are not affected. The founder added that the company remains solvent with 2x the amount still stored in equity. Thus, if the lenders decide to recall the loans, Wintermute will respectfully facilitate them.
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Gaevoy reassured customers, stating that their funds are safe if they own an MM agreement with the market maker. The platform will disrupt its services for some days and return to normal shortly.
Only two of the 90 affected assets have been valued at over 1 million dollars. Thus, there should not be any major selloff. Wintermute will interact with both parties to formulate a plan moving forward.
Wintermute is known across the market for providing liquidity on 50+ exchanges. These platforms include Kraken, FTX, Coinbase, Binance, Uniswap, Dydx, etc. It is also an investor in startups like Ondo Finance, HashFlow, and Nomad.
Wintermute had not disclosed when the breach occurred or from where it was generated. The platform has not also talked about informing law enforcement about the development. However, seeing how it is ranked among the fastest-growing crypto firms, Wintermute will not let the breach slide.
One of its subsidiaries, Nomad, also lost 190 million dollars, while Bridge lost 600 million dollars to a hack. The DeFi domain lost more than 1.3 billion dollars in 2021; a number 2022 might cross, unfortunately.
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Given the growing frequency of such instances, DeFi projects are tightening their security protocols even more.
