Thorchain's RUNE Token Tumbles After 2nd Exploit in 2 Weeks

The latest exploit cost the blockchain protocol $8 million.

Jul 23, 2021 at 4:35 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 14, 2021 at 1:30 p.m. UTC

thor mosh 3 — Lately, Thorchain has had to battle with attackers everywhere.

Thorchain's token, RUNE, tumbled in digital-asset markets after the blockchain suffered an exploit for the second time in two weeks, this one costing about $8 million.

The RUNE price was $3.58 as of press time, down 25% over the past 24 hours, in the worst performance among digital assets tracked by Messari with a market capitalization of at least $500 million. The token has lost some 80% since hitting an all-time high price in May..

Thorchain said late Thursday it was hit by an exploit, reported to have cost around $8 million. Last week, the protocol was drained of around 4,000 ether ($8.2 million) in another incident.

Thorchain, now with a market capitalization of $841 million, was founded in 2018 and is a decentralized liquidity protocol that allows for swapping native assets between different blockchains.

Regarding the latest incident, Thorchain told CoinDesk a hacker deployed a custom contract that tricked the network's Bifrost Protocol into receiving a deposit of fake assets. It then processed a refund of real assets to the hacker.

The RUNE token is still up by 178% year to date, handily outperforming the 11% return of bitcoin.

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