In October 2021, AnubisDAO, a project associated with the popularity of “dog-coin,” suffered a significant loss of approximately $60 million from its liquidity pool. The incident is suspected to be a rug pull, where funds were drained by an unknown party. The developer, Beerus, claimed to have been a victim of a phishing attack after opening a malicious link in a PDF, which exposed the private keys used for the project’s liquidity pool launch.
However, one of the DAO leaders, Sisyphus, doubted this explanation and suggested the involvement of a rogue team member. The theft was reported to law enforcement agencies in Hong Kong and the US. Efforts are underway to recover the stolen funds, including a 1000 Ethereum bounty offered by Sisyphus.
On July 16, it was observed that AnubisDAO, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that was previously rug-pulled and lost nearly $60 million in Ether back in October 2021, has recently resurfaced. According to the recent report by PeckShield, the stolen funds were moved through Tornado Cash, a decentralized protocol for private transactions, in transactions of 100 ETH each. The current value of the stolen funds is approximately $26.2 million.
The incident serves as a reminder for investors to conduct thorough research on projects and their founders before making any investments. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that the duped investors will be able to recover their funds, especially considering the bear market conditions.
Additionally, Geist Finance, a lending protocol, had to permanently shut down due to losses from a Multichain exploit. Technical complications prevent the platform from reopening lending and borrowing services, as it would result in bad debt for holders of non-Multichain coins like Magic Internet Money (MIM) or Fantom.
Regarding Tornado Cash, on August 8, 2022, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash, a decentralized protocol for discreet transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. The sanction was a response to Tornado Cash’s involvement in laundering approximately $7 billion in cryptocurrency, including funds stolen by cybercriminals.
Notably, Tornado Cash was involved in laundering $455 million stolen by the North Korean-affiliated hacking group Lazarus Group from Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge protocol. As a result, US crypto users and businesses were prohibited from engaging with Tornado Cash. This action by the US Treasury aimed to crack down on money laundering and hold accountable those enabling illicit activities in the crypto space.