Solana
Crypto Theft in Solana’s Pump.fun, Crypto King Arrested, and More…
- ALEX, based on Solana’s Pump.fun and Stacks, suffered attacks worth millions
- US DOJ also arrested two brothers linked to $25 million Ethereum exploit
Crypto regulations and exploits dominated market headlines this week. From at Solana Pump.fun to Bitcoin’s L2 ecosystem, exploits siphoned off millions of dollars.
Solana memecoin launcher Pump.fun suffered an exploit on Thursday, resulting in losses of approximately $2 million. This, according to the head of research at Wintermute – Igor Igamberdiev.
Surprisingly, the attack came just hours after the platform hit record revenues and surpassed Solana, its L1 blockchain security.
According to Pump.fun, the platform was compromised by a former employee who claims responsibility for the attack. Announcing the resumption of normal operations, the memecoin launcher soon revealed,
“Pump.fun contracts are safe. They have always been safe. A former employee used his privileged position in the company to embezzle approximately 12.3 thousand SOL (~$1.9 million) »
More crypto hacks and arrests
The Solana ecosystem was not the only one to suffer an exploit yesterday. Another attack recorded against Bitcoin ecosystem project ALEX — An automated liquidity exchange based on Stacks [STX]a BTC L2 scaling solution.
Interestingly, the attack also involved a compromised private key, draining the protocol of multiple assets, including 13.7 million STX.
The project recovered some funds and proposed asking Stacks to burn the accounts linked to the stolen STX funds. However, Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali decreases the request, citing,
“The compromise of the ALEX private key is unfortunate. There is, however, no clarity contract or exploit issue.
It remains to be seen how the rest of the funds lost at Pump.fun and ALEX will be recovered.
Meanwhile, some long-standing crypto crimes have resulted in major charges and arrests. For example, the US DoJ stopped two brothers for an alleged attack on the Ethereum network. Anton Peraire-Bueno and James Pepaire-Bueno were accused of stealing $25 million using sophisticated Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) bots. This episode marks the DOJ’s first lawsuit against MEV.
Additionally, Canadian authorities recently arrested the controversial “Canadian Crypto King,” Aiden Pleterski. Pleterski allegedly ran a crypto investment scam as recently as February, although he was the subject of a bankruptcy filing over a year ago for similar projects that made losing more than $40 million to investors. According to a report, Pleterski was arrested and charged with money laundering. However, he has now been released on bail.