The decentralized finance (DeFi) community’s insatiable appetite for unaudited code has once again ended in tears and the loss of millions.
Eminence, an unfinished “economy for a gaming multiverse” being built by Yearn Finance’s Andre ‘I test in production’ Cronje, was discovered by DeFi sleuths after the developer posted art teasers for the project to Twitter. He then headed to bed on September 28.
Excitement for the upcoming project quickly reached a fever pitch, with the community FOMOing roughly $15 million into the EMN protocol. However, the protocol was quickly exploited and drained … before the hacker bizarrely opted to transfer $8 million of the funds back to Cronje’s yearn deployer account by the time the developer had woken up:
3/x 5. We posted the first clan “Spartans”. And I went to bed.
6. Around ~3AM I was messaged awake to find out a) almost 15m was deposited into the contracts b) the contracts were exploited for the full 15m and c) 8m was sent to my yearn: deployer account.
— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) September 29, 2020
Noting that he has received “a fair amount of threats” Cronje announced that the Yearn treasury will assist in refunding users back the $8 million he received from the hacker according to a snapshot of EMN balances prior to the hack.
Cronje emphasized that neither Eminence’s contracts nor ecosystem are final, highlighting that he wasn’t planning on releasing the project for at least another three weeks.
Cryptox will follow the story as it unfolds and update this article accordingly.
