Ankr deploys $15M to make whole users as Helio stablecoin recovers after exploit

According to a Twitter station dated Dec. 7, stablecoin protocol Helio, which issues the HAY stablecoin pegged against the U.S. dollar, said that the steadfast had bought backmost $3 cardinal worthy of atrocious indebtedness successful HAY frankincense acold successful the unfastened market. The time prior, blockchain infrastructure level Ankr stated it would allocate $15 cardinal to bargain backmost the atrocious indebtedness resulting from its caller exploit and the resultant over-circulation of HAY. 

A bid of seemingly unrelated incidents occurred connected Dec. 2 erstwhile a hacker manipulated vulnerabilities successful Ankr's astute declaration codification and compromised backstage keys aft a method upgrade. As a result, the hacker minted 20 trillion Ankr Reward Bearing Staked BNB (aBNBc) tokens, pegged to the BNB token (BNB), and dumped them arsenic the terms of aBNBc plunged to little than $2.

However, a trader past took vantage of an alleged hard-coding of pegged prices betwixt aBNBc and BNB connected the Helio protocol. The trader bought 183,885 aBNBc with lone 10 BNB and utilized it arsenic collateral to get 16 cardinal HAY, which was past swapped for 15.5 cardinal Binance USD, earning a 5,209x profit from their archetypal capital.

— Helio Protocol ($HAY) (@Helio_Money) December 4, 2022

Subsequent to the exploit, HAY mislaid its peg and fell to arsenic debased arsenic $0.20 per coin earlier recovering astir of its losses and is present trading astatine $0.96 astatine the clip of publication. Immediately aft the incident, the Helio squad stated that it would beryllium repurchasing the excess HAY and sending it to a pain address. Originally, users were capable to mint HAY by depositing BNB arsenic collateral astatine a ratio of 152%. The protocol had a full worth locked of astir $90 cardinal earlier the incident.