Polygon (MATIC) Reveals it was Hacked Earlier this Month

Polygon is a project that provides a framework for creating Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks and scaling solutions. The project has become the latest crypto venture to suffer an attack.

Polygon Suffers an Attack

The Polygon development team announced in a blog post yesterday that it suffered a hack earlier this month. The hacker carted away with 801,601 MATIC tokens before the vulnerability was fixed.

A white-hat hacker alerted the Polygon team about a possible exploit to Immunefi, which hosts Polygon’s $2 million bounty program. The team confirmed the vulnerability and proceeded to upgrade the mainnet as soon as possible. The mainnet upgrade was completed on December 5, and the vulnerability was fixed.

However, before the vulnerability was fixed, the attacker stole over 800,000 MATIC (over $1.6 million) tokens from the ecosystem. The team said, “Polygon paid a total of about $3.46 million as bounty to two white hats who helped discover the bug. Despite our best efforts, a malicious hacker was able to use the exploit to steal 801,601 MATIC before the network upgrade took effect. The foundation will bear the cost of the theft.”

MATIC recently reached a new all-time high of $2.66 after decentralized exchange Uniswap launched on the Polygon blockchain.

Polygon Implements Extra Security Protocols

Polygon’s team added in the blog post that following the attack, it implemented a few policies to make its network more resilient in the future. The team upgraded its critical response processes and consolidated partner contact info and communications channels. Finally, the team identified and formalized backups for key internal resources to eliminate single points of failure during time-sensitive situations.

MATIC, the native token of the Polygon ecosystem, is down by more than 3% over the past 24 hours. At press time, MATIC is trading at $2.48 per coin. Year-to-date, MATIC’s value has soared by more than 13,000%.

The MATIC/USD daily chart is still bullish despite the cryptocurrency currently down by more than 3% in the past 24 hours. This is because MATIC is up by more than 39% in the past month. The MACD line currently lies above the neutral zone, indicating strong bullish momentum. MATIC’s 14-day RSI is 54, and the token is trading above its 50-day moving average of $2.05.