A hacker manipulated EigenLayer email thread to walk away with $5.7 million worth of EIGEN tokens. EIGEN was unlocked to trade only a few days before the incident.
Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer suffered an exploit on October 4 as a hacker managed to intercept its communications channel and divert asset transfers worth $5.7 million to their wallet. In an X post, it mentioned it was “investigating unapproved selling activity” surrounding the wallet address “0xA7A1c66168cC0b5fC78721157F513c89697Df10D.” Etherscan has labeled it as being under investigation by the restaking protocol.
Source: Etherscan
EigenLayer followed up on October 5 with more details. “In an isolated incident this morning, an email thread involving one investor’s transfer of tokens into custody was compromised by a malicious attacker.” The hacker managed to “erroneously” transfer 1,673,645 EIGEN tokens, which were meant to be sent to an investor.
They then moved the assets to decentralized swapping services to trade for stablecoins and move them to centralized exchanges. ”We are in contact with these platforms and law enforcement,” the post read, adding, “A portion of the funds have already been frozen.”
The protocol assured that no known vulnerabilities exist on its on-chain functionalities and that it is safe to interact with the protocol since this attack involved manipulating its communications channels. “We continue to investigate the situation and will be posting further information once we have it,” it finally added.
EIGEN Began Trading on October 1
EigenLayer’s native token began trading for the first time on October 1, just a few days before the exploit. It started with a price of $3.85, cracking the top 100 cryptocurrencies to achieve the 94th spot. Its fully diluted value (FDV) was at about $6.5 billion with the launch. EIGEN is trading at $3.20 at the time of writing, exhibiting an FDV of $5.3 billion on October 5. With that, it no longer finds itself in the top 100 but could soon make its return, considering the tremendous usage it witnesses and the potential it holds.
The token was launched in May and sent to ecosystem participants, partners, and contributors through an airdrop. However, it was blocked from being transferred. That was unlocked on October 1.
“$EIGEN launched exactly in line with the pre-market price, sitting at $7B FDV,” said Alpha Please’s pseudonymous founder Aylo. “6 months ago I’m not sure anyone would have said that $EIGEN would be valued less than those above coins…,” they added.
