DeFi Lender UwU Hacked for Nearly $20M in Fresh Exploit

UwU Lend, a decentralized lending platform, has become the latest victim of a malicious hack. According to the blockchain security firm, Arkham, the lending protocol saw $19.3 million stolen by bad actors.

Although the cause of the hack is yet to be identified, some users claim that the project’s founder is the one behind the attack.

UwU Lend Loses $19.3M

UwU Lend was forked from the open-source codes for AAVE v2, an Ethereum-based lending protocol. It offers a cohort of services, such as lending, borrowing, and staking. Users are offered 100% of revenues generated by the platform, which are issued as a revenue-sharing token called UwU.

According to its official website, UwU Lend claims to have never been hacked since its inception in 2022. Still, it joins a long list of hacks swamping the DeFi sector.

On-chain data shows the bad actor transporting the stolen funds across several wallet addresses. A crypto user who reported the exploit on the blockchain explorer Etherscan stated that the bad actor used Curve LlamaLend as “exit liquidity” for the attack.

At the time of writing, UwU Lend’s developer team acknowledged the attack and reassured users that actions were being carried out to retrieve the stolen funds.

“The protocol was paused a little under an hour ago while the team investigates the situation. Please rest assured that we were made aware of the situation immediately and are taking all necessary steps, doing our best here. Stay tuned for further updates,” the project’s team wrote.

Insider Job?

With no post-mortem report identifying the cause of the attack, some users have accused the project’s founder as the brains behind the exploit.

Michael Patryn, the co-founder of a collapsed Canadian crypto exchange called QuadrigaCX, launched UwU Lend in September 2022. He was also caught moving millions of dollars worth of ETH from Wonderland DAO, where he served as treasurer. With his reappearance as UwU’s team lead, Patryn is identified by a moniker, Sifu.

Due to his rough past, some community members are suspicious that Sifu may be behind the funds’ loss. However, there is no evidence to back these claims.