The founder of Nirvana Finance talks about the ‘worst day’ of his life

Until now, Superposition's head of ecosystem, Alex Hoffman, has kept it secret that he is the founder of Nirvana Finance, the decentralized finance (DeFi) product protocol that was leveraged in a $3.5 million flash two years ago.

Now, he's set to attach his name to the title of an anonymous founder and the story of his “bad day,” when he woke up one morning to find that all the money in Nirvana Finance was gone.

“Literally the week we were supposed to start the audit, we woke up to the fact that it was canceled,” Hoffman told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview on the morning of July 28, 2022.

“When that happens, you learn who your friends are and who aren't.”

The search for the Nirvana Finance hacker lasted 17 months.

It wasn't until December 2023 that software engineer Shakeeb Ahmed was arrested for allegedly hacking Nirvana Finance, after a lengthy investigation by blockchain investigators and multiple enforcement agencies. On April 12, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

Hoffman explained that Ahmed's exploitation was so “sophisticated” that it took so long. Despite the best efforts of blockchain investigators, they continue to come to “dead ends.”

Random Telegram message from Homeland Security

But it was a major turning point for the investigation when an officer at the US Department of Homeland Security believed he had a strong lead on the exploit, linking the Telegram message to the same hacker behind another recent exploit.

“The group wanted to see if they could cooperate to help them build the case,” Hoffman said.

Before Hoffman knew it, the next few months would be spent going back and forth with the chief and other Homeland Security officials, prosecutors and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigators.

Finally, after considering transactions with other exploits, the officials asked Hoffman to step in and explain exactly how the protocol's infrastructure works. From there they were able to trace the exploiter to Ahmed.

Although Nirvana Finance is not open source, Hoffman explained that Ahmed found the flaw in the code by “pinging the system and checking it.”

Hoffman received death threats for his exploits

The 17 months were incredibly stressful for Hoffman, he said.

Not only did he lose most of his money, which was tied up in a flawless protocol, but as an anonymous founder, he made his victims think he had “bothered” the project.

He wanted to dox himself there and then explain that the founder behind the project was not the cause of the exploit.

However, the threats were already pouring in on Nirvana Finance's Twitter account and it was feared that it was only a matter of time before someone could figure out his identity.

“I have received dozens of death threats and threats to harm my wife, mother and children; It was non-stop,” Hoffman said.

Solana's CEO pushed the audit firms to prioritize Nirvana's finances

Reflecting on the rise and fall of the protocol, Hoffman said he never expected Nirvana Finance to achieve the rapid success it did.

“We started without thinking that it would have this much traction. We were trying to do a soft launch,” before revealing that it had attracted the attention of several Chinese news publications, causing the total locked value (TVL) to increase significantly.

“In the first week, it managed to get around 25 million TVLs,” he said.

Related: Japanese exchange DMM loses $305M in Bitcoin in private key hack

He fired so quickly that even Solana took notice, and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko personally urged him to conduct a security audit of the protocol.

Meanwhile, Hoffman was already on the waiting list to do so; The waiting list was long among major audit firms.

“Anatoly personally asked one of the auditing firms if they could move us to the front of the list,” Hoffman added.

Today, Nirvana Finance remains a plaintiff but the plan is “still a work in progress.” In the meantime, investors should exercise caution when trading Generation Token Nirvana (NIRV), according to Nirvana Finance's website.

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