It must be a devastating week for the Hope Finance community as the DeFi protocol lost roughly $2 million worth of user funds to cyber criminals on February 20. 

Hope Finance is an Arbitrum-based DeFi project that supports a multi-token protocol that consists of three tokens; HOPE, DREAM, and WISH. It aims to provide value to and derive value from Ethereum’s future growth and to make ETH the main medium of exchange on the Arbitrum network.

Hope Finance allegedly named the hacker who attacked its community Ugwoke Pascal Chukwuebuka, from Nigeria. According to a blockchain security firm Pechkshield, the hacker transferred 1095 worth of ETH through Tornado Cash’s mixing protocol. 

However, the smart contract that was exploited by the hacker was different from the audit that Hope Finance released. According to a spokesperson from Cognitos, Hope Finance seemed to have contracted it for a smart contract code review and security analysis. 

In addition, Hope Finance changed the contract multiple times and was “rechecked by its engineer”. It also seems that their contact with the Hope Finance workforce has deleted his account and the invite to the discord channel became invalid and the official website was inaccessible at this stage. A rug pull? No one knows at this stage.

The crypto market is still vulnerable and will remain a target for attacks. Especially to the DeFi ecosystem since the market has been growing rapidly. Experts believe that these attacks will most likely increase as days go by so investors need to be more cautious.