On 12th October 2023, a notable incident occurred within the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector as the protocol Platypus Finance on the Avalanche blockchain faced an exploit. The exploit led to a loss surpassing $2 million, triggering a surge of concern within its community and beyond.
Platypus Finance, via its official Twitter handle @Platypusdefi, alerted the community to suspicious activities within their protocol. The tweet, timestamped at 3:11 pm, mentioned that as a precautionary measure, they had temporarily suspended all pools. The aim was to ensure the safety of the funds and the integrity of the protocol while they investigate the issue. The tweet ended with a note thanking the community for their patience and understanding during this period.
Within the hour, at 3:21 pm, the blockchain security company PeckShield Inc took to Twitter to notify Platypus Finance about a possible exploit. Under the hashtag #PeckShieldAlert, they mentioned that Platypus Finance on Avalanche (referred as #AVAX) had been exploited for approximately $1 million. However, an update following shortly after revealed that the total loss was over $2 million. PeckShield’s tweet contained a link to snowtrace.io, which provided a detailed transaction info related to the exploit, with the transaction hash 0x6a09d38505beeb29ed4dbb30de2803f30f3c62e2464c6a20ec17026c372c763e.
The abrupt suspension of all pools within Platypus Finance and the subsequent revelation of the exploit caused a ripple within the DeFi community on Avalanche. The news garnered significant attention, with the tweets from Platypus Finance and PeckShield Inc acquiring 23.8K and 5,090 views respectively. As the DeFi space continues to grow, incidents like these underscore the importance of robust security measures to ensure the safety of users’ funds and the stability of the protocols involved.
Platypus Finance assured its users that further updates regarding the incident and the measures to rectify the situation would be communicated timely. The DeFi community is now keenly awaiting more information on how Platypus Finance plans to address the security lapse and compensate the affected users.
Image source: Shutterstock
