Groundhog project groundhog "stolen", users lost $31.5 million

On the afternoon of March 5th, Beijing time, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) users reported that the DeFi project Meerkat Finance (Groundhog) was attacked, and the loss was as high as 31.5 million US dollars, including 14 million US dollars worth of BUSD and 17.6 million US dollars worth of BUSD. BNB. Some users announced the addresses involved in the BSC community, as follows:

"This is by far the biggest scam on BSC. I hope the Binance team can recover users' funds and restore the community's trust in BSC." The victimized user left a message in the BSC community.

The BSC official team stated that it has discovered the abnormal situation of Meerkat Finance and synchronized with the Binance security team; at present, the audit companies Certik, Peckshield, and Slow Mist of the "BSC Farmers Security Association" have been involved in the investigation, KOL Shenyu, Leon, etc. We are assisting in tracing the flow of stolen assets, and any progress will be synchronized with the public as soon as possible(Click to jump to the community)。

The Binance official responded: We have discovered an abnormal situation in Meerkat Finance, and the Binance security team is following up. If it is detected that the funds flow to the Binance trading platform, it will be frozen. At the same time, Binance officials recommend that you choose mainstream projects for investment, and carefully participate in anonymous small and medium-sized projects.

PeckShield security personnel discovered that the project mainly steals coins through the back door left by the smart contract.

At present, the official website of Meerkat Finance can no longer be opened; BSC related DEX has delisted the trading pair of Meerkat Finance governance token MKAT.

It is understood that Meerkat Finance is an imitation of the NFT project Alpaca City. Users can obtain MKAT rewards by staking BNB, BUSD or providing liquidity for BNB-MKAT. The initial annualized income of the project was as high as 200,000%, coupled with the user base laid by Alpaca City, Meerkat Finance has attracted a large number of assets in a short period of time.

Affected by the attack, many users have concerns about the security of Alpaca City. However, according to people familiar with the matter, the smart contract of Alpaca City has added a "time lock" function, so the risk is relatively small. Although Alpaca’s governance token ALPA was not affected by tonight’s attack, Odaily also found that Alpaca City’s recent activity has been low, and the average daily trading volume of ALPA on BSC-related DEX is only a few hundred dollars.

As the encryption market became active, all kinds of "earth dogs" and imitation disks emerged in an endless stream. For users, it is necessary to carefully choose the Tugou project that has not been audited; do a good job of protection to avoid excessive authorization of the wallet address; at the same time, remember that one project has one address, and frequently change the address to prevent the wallet from being stolen.

It is not yet possible to confirm whether this incident was an attack on the project or self-stealing, but it is a fact that an unsafe project has absorbed a large amount of funds in a short period of time. Although Binance is actively following up on this incident, after all, projects on Ethereum have collapsed, and it is impossible to hold V God accountable again and again. The safest permanent solution is: invest cautiously, stay away from local dogs to keep safe, and remember you see What others value is your principal.