Solana Protocol Raydium Hacked for Over $2 Million

Solana’s woes continue as the Raydium protocol, an automated market maker (AMM) on the Solana (SOL) network was hacked on December 16.

Raydium, a Solana DeFi protocol was hacked for over $2 million early on Friday. According to reports, the hacker extracted funds from multiple Raydium liquidity pools without owning or burning any liquidity provider (LP) tokens. It appears that the hacker used the protocol’s own private keys to drain liquidity pools, but it remains unclear how they got them. The attacker managed to overtake the organization’s “owner authority” and used that access to begin draining Raydium’s liquidity pools. According to reports by Decrypt, DeFi tools allow users to borrow, lend and trade crypto assets with each other without the need for third-party intermediaries. AMMs such as Raydium achieve this by letting users contribute assets to a pool often in exchange for token rewards.

Over $2 Million was Drained

Raydium confirmed the hack via Twitter and added that investigations remain ongoing. The protocol added a link to the attacker’s account which appears to hold $1.45 million worth of Solana-based tokens.

An exploit on Raydium is being investigated that affected liquidity pools. Details to follow as more is known

⁰Initial understanding is owner authority was overtaken by attacker, but authority has been halted on AMM & farm programs for now
Attacker accnthttps://t.co/ZnEgL1KSwz

— Raydium (@RaydiumProtocol) December 16, 2022

In a matter of hours, the attacker stole over $2.2 million worth of digital assets from a Raydium pool, including $1.6 million worth of SOL, per reports by blockchain analytics firm Nansen.

The wallet draining LP Pools from Raydium liquidity pools has received over $2.2M now, including $1.6M $SOL

Track here: https://t.co/IQedsOstPE pic.twitter.com/OAQJgaq5Mc

— Nansen Portfolio (@nansenportfolio) December 16, 2022

Raydium is one of the cornerstones of the Solana DeFi ecosystem and one of its largest DeFi protocols. A vulnerability such as this encouraged members of the Raydium community to withdraw from the protocol.

‘Tis Not the Season for Solana

The recent collapse of FTX has sent shockwaves through the entire crypto space and has had far-reaching consequences, particularly for Solana. Not long after the implosion of the exchange, it was revealed that the private keys to Solana decentralised exchange and liquidity provider Serum, coincidently co-founded by Sam Bankman-Fried himself, were housed on FTX. As Serum was integrated with practically every major Solana DeFi project, including Raydium, fear and panic spread across the entire network. A number of protocols, including Raydium, frantically severed ties with Serum which initiated a fork of the project removed from and untainted by the vast fallout from the FTX fiasco.

While there has been no evidence to suggest that the attack on Raydium was linked to Serum or FTX, it does indicate that difficulties still lie ahead for Solana.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.