Crypto theft in Solana’s Pump.fun, crypto king arrested, and more…

  • Solana’s Pump.fun and Stacks-based ALEX suffered attacks worth millions 
  • United States’ DOJ also arrested two brothers linked to a $25M Ethereum exploit

As a researcher with extensive experience in the crypto space, I’ve seen my fair share of market volatility and security breaches. This week’s headlines have been dominated by exploits that have siphoned millions of dollars from various projects, including Solana’s Pump.fun and Bitcoin’s Stacks-based ALEX.


As a researcher studying the cryptocurrency market, I’ve noticed that news around regulations and exploits have been making waves this past week. For instance, the incident with Solana’s Pump.fun and Bitcoin‘s L2 ecosystem has led to significant financial losses, amounting to millions of dollars being siphoned away.

On Thursday, there was a security breach in Pump.fun, Solana’s memecoin launchpad, resulting in approximately $2 million in damages, as reported by Igor Igamberdiev, the Head of Research at Wintermute.

It was unexpected that an attack occurred on the platform, given that it had recently achieved new revenue heights and exceeded Solana in terms of L1 blockchain security.

As a crypto investor following developments at Pump.fun closely, I’ve learned that the platform suffered a security breach instigated by a former team member who confessed to the incident. Subsequently, the memecoin launcher updated us with the good news of resuming regular operations.

As a researcher, I’ve examined the safety of pump.fun contracts and can confirm that they have consistently been secure. However, it is important to note that a previous employee took advantage of their insider status within the company to misappropriate approximately 12.3 K SOL (equivalent to around $1.9 million) from these contracts.

More crypto hacks and arrests

As a researcher investigating the recent incidents in the cryptocurrency world, I came across two significant exploits that occurred within the last twenty-four hours. One affected Solana’s ecosystem, but it was not an isolated case. Another project using Bitcoin’s ecosystem, named ALEX – an automated liquidity exchange built on Stacks (STX), a secondary layer scaling solution for Bitcoin – also experienced an attack.

It’s intriguing that the hack included a stolen private key, resulting in the depletion of over 13.7 million STX from the protocol.

The project managed to retrieve some finances and suggested that Stacks should destroy the accounts associated with the stolen STX funds. But Muneeb Ali, one of Stacks’ co-founders, refused this proposition, explaining,

As a researcher investigating the recent ALEX private key compromise, I want to clarify that there is no discernible contract issue or known exploit to blame for this incident.

It remains to be seen how the rest of the lost funds at Pump.fun and ALEX will be recovered. 

During this period, several long-standing crypto crimes resulted in significant charges and apprehensions. For example, the U.S Department of Justice apprehended two brothers for an alleged assault on the Ethereum network. Anton Peraire-Bueno and James Pepaire-Bueno are suspected of making off with $25 million by utilizing advanced MEV (Maximum Value Extraction) bots. This incident represents the first lawsuit filed by the DOJ against MEV.

As a crypto investor, I’ve been closely following the recent developments regarding Aiden Pleterski, who’s been referred to as the “Canadian crypto-king.” It’s disheartening to learn that this individual, who was allegedly involved in crypto investment scams as recently as February, has once again found himself under investigation.

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2024-05-17 11:35