Solana-based stablecoin protocol Cashio fell victim to an exploit known as Infinite Mint Glitch on 23 March, the official announcement read. Following the incident, the DeFi project’s TVL figure plummeted by $28 million, and its flagship token, CASH could not bear the onslaught and suffered to the point of total wipeout.
While the exact extent of the damage is still uncertain, one developer by the name of samczsum put the loss to be at $50M based on a ‘quick skim’.
According to him, the attacker forged a chain of fake accounts by exploiting a vulnerability in Cashio’s smart contracts to mint an infinite supply of CASH without providing any liquidity in exchange.
Data from Solscan showed that the perpetrator minted two billion CASH stablecoins and then swapped them for other paired assets [mostly other stablecoins] through the decentralized exchange Saber. The DEX then posted an update announcing that it had paused its CASH liquidity pools after the incident.
For the uninitiated, Cashio is a Solana-based DeFi application that allows users to mint CASH stablecoins. Along with that, all deposits are backed by interest-bearing liquidity provider tokens. For instance, someone can provide liquidity with USDT and USDC to mint CASH.
Solana Ecosystem Continues to Attract high-profile partnerships
Despite the ongoing threats of hack that have crawled up in the DeFi space, several partnerships are blooming on the Solana ecosystem. Recently the platform has signed an agreement with the creators of blockchain game Krafton labs for an undisclosed amount.
The partnership will see the PUBG pioneer build blockchain games and services on Solana, which also suggests that Krafton may soon incorporate cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens [NFTs] into its games.
Not only that, a leading digital collectible marketplace Rarible is preparing to add support for the Solana network. This was revealed through a screenshot shared by Jane Manchun Wong who happens to be a technology blogger and app researcher.
A few months ago, Wong dropped hints of a possible collaboration by tweeting that the world’s largest NFT marketplace OpenSea was working on Solana integration. However, these rumors were not officially confirmed by the NFT kingpin, at the time of this post.