Euler Labs hack in March, which saw $196 million taken from the lending protocol. BUT... around a month later, Euler announced it was able to recover around 90% of the lost funds after negotiations with the hacker.
Factoring in those recovered funds puts the 2023 figure closer to 90% down on last year. That's somewhere around $100 - $150 million stolen on Ethereum this year vs $1.3 billion for the FIRST QUARTER of 2022 alone.
- DeFi-focused security measures are becoming more robust
- The closure of several high-profile mixing services including Ethereum-based Tornado Cash following its sanctioning by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control in August 2022.
- The growing realisation that there is nowhere to hide on-chain.
You can run but you can't hide**
Once the address is public, its a near-guarantee that the stolen funds are being watched: by exchanges, online sleuths, law enforcement, blockchain analytics firms, and anyone curious enough to plug the wallet address into a block explorer like Blockchain.com or Etherscan.
Its the same conclusion that Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Rhiannon Morgan came to when seeking to cash in on the 94,643 Bitcoin they had procured from the 2016 hack of Bitfinex.
Instead, the funds ended up sitting on a thumb drive in a cupboard for years. Accumulating value but entirely untouched. Until they were caught and arrested following a tip-off in 2022.
bc1qazcm763858nkj2dj986etajv6wquslv8uxwczt_
A powerful compliance ally**
What we see here is the blockchain being used as a compliance tool. And a powerful one too. As an immutable transaction ledger, it contains the history of everything ever done. Take Bitcoin for example: its blockchain records every transfer of value between every address, along with amounts, valued and timestamps.
So with enough data, its possible to piece together not just the fund flows, but the probity of someone’s activity. This allows for robust due diligence: AML checks, source of wealth analytics, and asset tracing. All the tools you’d need to police activity on-chain is provided by the blockchain.
For those interested, the Euler Labs hackers addresses were:
0xebc29199c817dc47ba12e3f86102564d640cbf99
If you’d like to find out more about how we collect and curate our data, get in touch with the team at_info@hoptrail.io_**or reach out to ushere_._**