Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author: Wenser ( @wenser 2010 )
First, Bybit was robbed of over $1.5 billion in assets, and then the Web3 Yuebao Infini was robbed of nearly $50 million in project funds due to private key management issues. According to official disclosure, the attack was committed by internal engineers, and the official will fully compensate for the related losses, and the platform withdrawals will operate normally.
Previously, Infini had attracted great attention from the market by cooperating with KOLs and crypto communities to launch U cards, and Spring Festival on-chain red envelopes, and many people once used it as one of the payment methods for daily consumption. Data shows that the number of followers of the official X platform account just exceeded 10,000 yesterday, and the platform TVL exceeded 50 million US dollars. After this security incident, it may take some time to build trust.
Odaily Planet Daily will briefly review Infini and the theft in this article for readers reference.
Infini: A rising star in PayFi featuring the concept of “Web3 Yu’ebao”
According to the official account of the Infini X platform , the project is committed to building a next-generation stablecoin digital bank to facilitate users to make money and pay at any time and anywhere, targeting the PayFi track and payment + financial management scenarios.
According to the official website , Infini is a crypto payment method for the general public. Through Infini, users can make instant crypto payments and earn daily interest at the same time. There are no regular bank card management fees such as monthly/annual fees. Virtual cards are currently available, and physical cards will be launched later.
Previously, Infini carried out cooperation activities such as co-branded card with no card opening fee with major crypto communities and Chinese-speaking KOLs. Because of its free card opening fee, online card design, convenient and fast stablecoin recharge and smooth daily consumption experience, it has won the love of many people.
In addition, the Infini team previously launched the on-chain red envelope function during the Spring Festival, where users can directly send stablecoin red envelopes through a link, which is comparable to the exchange red envelope function of exchanges such as Binance. With the help of the holiday popularity during the Spring Festival, it also attracted a lot of traffic. (Odaily Planet Daily Note: Although the built-in browser of WeChat blocked the Infini red envelope link soon after).
In terms of partners, Infini has also made a lot of preparations: these include the consumer-grade public chain Morpho, the well-known asset management institution COBO, as well as well-known projects in the industry such as the Ethereum re-staking protocol and the stablecoin protocol Ethena.
Infini official website partner list
It can be said that Infini’s past development has taken advantage of the right time, right place, and right people.
The timing is right, with the rise of the PayFi track, there is a huge demand gap for real-life payments among people in the crypto industry. Daily life and festivals such as the Spring Festival are important use cases for crypto payments;
The geographical advantage lies in the diversified income opportunities provided by partners such as Morpho, including on-chain lending protocol partners (see Morpho), RWA based on US Treasury bonds (see Usual), and Delta neutral stablecoin protocols (see Ethena).
The harmony lies in the industry influence accumulated by Infini founder Christian and team members such as Junzhu and their own publicity and popularization. In particular, Christian, as an NFT giant, on-chain crypto player, active angel investor, and co-founder of a capital institution, helped Infinis early promotion platform greatly, allowing it to quickly find its first wave of seed users.
Unfortunately, Success and failure are both due to Xiao He, and the fortress of revolution is always breached from within. The main reason for the security incident faced by Infini this time is the problem in the human harmony link. According to the previous disclosure of Infini Lianchuangjunzhu, it was an internal engineer who did evil (Odaily Planet Daily Note: The tweet has been deleted).
$50 million theft: Insider did the evil, project founder paid the bill
At about 11 a.m., according to Certik Alert monitoring , the Ethereum contract 0x9A79f4105A4e1A050Ba0b42F25351D394fA7E1DC had an abnormal fund transfer, and the receiving address 0x3ac96134fb0e42a52d33045aee50b89790f05ed0 received about 49.5 million U.S. dollars and was converting the funds into stablecoin Dai. The specific details are that the account 0xc49b5e5b9da66b9126c1a62e9761e6b2147de3e1 was hacked and granted the address 0x8e9b permission to withdraw all funds. The attacker has converted all funds into 17,696 ETH (worth 49 million U.S. dollars).
Subsequently, the news was cross-verified by the security agency Paidun. According to Paiduns monitoring , the stolen funds of Infini were transferred to a wallet funded by Tornado Cash and have been exchanged for DAI. The private key of the 0x c 49 b wallet may have been leaked.
Subsequently, Infini founder Christian responded on the X platform immediately:
The latest message came about 30 minutes ago. He said: 70% of the stolen $50 million belongs to big friends I know. I have communicated with them one by one and I will personally bear the possible losses and settle privately. The remaining funds will be reinvested in Infini Vault before next Monday, and everything will remain the same. The funds have been prepared and will respond to any withdrawal requests in the meantime, so please rest assured. Sorry, it will take some time to upgrade and restart the business, and everything will be carried out under the premise of ensuring the absolute safety of funds.
Christian has a good reputation in the industry. He also stepped forward during the liquidation of Curve founder and took over a portion of CRV tokens through OTC, thus avoiding further expansion of Curve ecological risks. Of course, the rebound of CRV token prices has also become a very eye-catching case in his crypto investment.
I believe that the theft of $50 million from Infini can be properly handled. After all, PayFi is still a hot sector in the industry and a track with real demand.
Infini theft follow-up: Bigwigs speak out in support, community unites against the enemy
After the Infini funds were stolen, the crypto community also responded from different levels. Overall, the reactions mainly came from the following two aspects:
Community retail investors: Infini was stolen, CHEEMS suffered
As a representative figure of the BSC Meme project CHEEMS community and a token holding giant, Christian has been regarded as a community spokesperson. In early February, he wrote , It can now be confirmed that Binance charges 0 listing fees for Memecoin, and I have just locked all my CHEEMS tokens to express my support for BNB Chain and the project. Later, LookonChain monitored that Christian did lock 8.64 trillion Cheems tokens for six months, and the total value of the tokens was approximately US$9.12 million at that time.
After the theft of Infini, CHEEMS was panic-sold and once fell below $0.00000085. The current price remains at around $0.00000088, with a market value of about $190 million. In addition, Christians latest response said: Most of my Cheems positions are locked, and I later bought millions of tokens on Binance, and this part will not be moved. Infini will not use a penny of Cheems for compensation. I believe that one day these coins will be worth 500 million. Money can be earned again if it is lost, but reputation cannot. If we firmly believe that we are creating a company worth hundreds of billions in the future, how can we be stopped by stumbling blocks on the road to growth? It fully demonstrates the strong confidence in the subsequent development of Infini and CHEEMS.
Du Jun Support: Willing to invest 5 million to 10 million US dollars
After the Infini theft, ABCDE co-founder Du Jun, who had previously expressed support for Bybit, wrote : Infini is not a big problem. I have talked to the team, and they are all good in terms of operational ideas, marketing, and financial strength. It is better to lose a little money to learn a lesson and strengthen security capabilities than to lose a lot of money when you grow bigger. I can give 5 to 10 million if you need it. I am worried that I cant invest it. Infini founder Christian also expressed his gratitude .
Summary: A temporary fall will not affect your ability to run faster in the future
At present, the theft incident suffered by Infini is just a temporary setback. Of course, this incident has once again sounded the alarm for the Infini team, the PayFi track and even the entire crypto industry. As Yishi, the founder of OneKey, said : Be respectful of security, dont give yourself the opportunity to make mistakes, dont leave loopholes for any internal or external evil, and be willing to invest a lot of money in security, otherwise dont do it.
I believe that after experiencing a security incident, no one will fail to learn a lesson, and this is also the price to pay for running faster in the future. I look forward to the good development of Infini in the future.
