DeFi lender UwU has been hacked to $20M in a new exploit

Decentralized lending platform UwU Lend has become the latest victim of a malicious hack. According to blockchain security firm Arkham, $19.3 million of the lending protocol was stolen by bad actors.

Although the cause of the hack is still unknown, some users claim that the founder of the project is behind the attack.

UU Loans lost $19.3 million.

UwU Lend for AAVE v2 is an Ethereum-based lending protocol forked from open source codes. It offers a range of services such as lending, borrowing and lending. Users give 100% of the revenues generated by the platform, which are represented as a revenue sharing token UwU.

According to its official website, UwU Lend claims to have never been hacked since its inception in 2022. Still, it joins a long list of data breaches that have plagued the definition industry.

On-chain data shows the bad actor transporting the stolen funds through multiple wallet addresses. A crypto user who reported the exploit on blockchain explorer Etherscan said the bad actor used Curve Lamaland as “exit liquidity” for the attack.

At the time of writing, the UwU Lend developer team acknowledged the attack and confirmed to users that steps are being taken to recover the stolen funds.

The protocol was halted an hour ago while the team investigated the situation. Please be assured that we will be aware of the situation immediately and take all necessary steps, we will do our best here. Stay tuned for more updates,” wrote the project team.

An insider job?

While there is no post-mortem report on what caused the attack, some users have accused the project's founder of being the mastermind behind the exploit.

Michael Patrine, co-founder of a Canadian crypto exchange called QuadrigaCX, launched UwU Lend in September 2022. He was also caught moving millions of dollars worth of ETH from the Wonderland DAO. He served as treasurer. Reappearing as the leader of Uuu's team, Patrin is distinguished by the moniker Sifu.

Because of his difficult past, some community members suspect Sifu may be behind the loss of funds. However, there is no evidence to support these claims.