More than $320 million stolen in latest apparent crypto hack

[superadmin]

• Wormhole, one of the most popular bridges linking the ethereum and solana blockchains, lost about $320 million in an apparent hack Wednesday afternoon.
  
• The two blockchains are popular in the world of DeFi, where programmable contracts can replace lawyers and bankers in some transactions, and NFTs.
  
• But few users stick with one blockchain exclusively, so bridges like Wormhole are a necessary go-between.
  

One of the most popular bridges linking the ethereum and solana blockchains lost more than $320 million Wednesday afternoon in an apparent hack.

It is DeFi’s second-biggest exploit ever, just after the $600 million Poly Network crypto heist, and it is the largest attack to date on solana, a rival to ethereum that is increasingly gaining traction in the non-fungible token (NFT) and decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems.

Ethereum is the most used blockchain network, and it is a big player in the world of DeFi, in which programmable pieces of code known as smart contracts can replace middlemen like banks and lawyers in certain types of business transactions. A more recently introduced competitor, solana, is growing in popularity, because it is cheaper and faster to use than ethereum.

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