Nexera burns stolen 32.5M NXRA tokens following hack

Nexera, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, has burned 32.5 million NXRA tokens that were involved in a recent hack as part of efforts to address the incident and enhance security.

According to an X post by blockchain security firm PeckShieldAlert, these 32.5 million NXRA tokens have been permanently removed from circulation.

Reason for the Nexera burn

In a second response to the breach, Nexera’s official X account announced several steps taken to address the hack. They concluded their technical investigation and determined that their smart contracts were not compromised.

However, to mitigate the damage caused by the exploit, the Nexera team quickly froze the remaining 32.5 million NXRA tokens in the attacker’s wallet after concluding that only $440K of the total NXRA tokens transferred were effectively compromised. Burning 32.5 million NXRA tokens was an important action aimed at supporting the stability of the Nexera ecosystem.

This action prevented the stolen and frozen tokens from being used, traded, or circulated within the market. By burning these tokens, Nexera aimed to mitigate any potential impact on the market.

The Nexera hack

On Aug. 7, Nexera was exploited in a smart contract security incident, resulting in the theft of $1.5 million worth of digital assets, including Nexera (NXRA) tokens. The protocol, which aims to bridge DeFi with traditional finance, was the target of a coordinated attack that affected multiple projects and protocols.

The hacker stole 47 million NXRA tokens, valued at approximately $1.76 million, and began selling a portion of them for Ether (ETH). They also transferred some funds to the BNB Chain. The total estimated loss was around $1.5 million.

According to updates provided by Nexera, the exploit was part of a broader coordinated attack targeting multiple projects and protocols. The protocol said there was no need to issue a new NXRA token; the existing token address would remain the same.

Users were strongly advised to refrain from trading. Given that the attacker had already engaged with exploit-related addresses on KuCoin and MEXC, these exchanges had suspended their services, including deposits, withdrawals, and trading. Additional exchanges were also notified and urged to take similar action.

This incident follows a similar breach at WazirX, an Indian cryptocurrency exchange, which lost over $230 million to a hacker just three weeks prior, marking the second-largest crypto hack of 2024 to date.