The price of Cardano (ADA) rose by almost 15% after IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson spoke about the security of Plutus smart contracts. His comments came amid hacks of DeFi projects MonoX and Badger DAO this week.
This is exactly why Plutus was written for Cardano. Good languages and tooling wotk with the developer and auditor enabling them to write great and secure code. Bad languages load and hand them the gun that they shoot themselves with:https://t.co/jpYr88CEBj
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) December 2, 2021
“That is why Plutus was written for Cardano. Good programming languages and tooling aimed at developers and the audience enable them to write excellent and secure code. Bad languages merely load them, handing them a gun that could shoot the owner,” wrote Hoskinson.
Following the post, Cardano’s price surpassed the $1.76 mark. At the time of writing, the price stood at around $1.66.
On November 30, hacker exfiltrated crypto assets worth $31 million from the MonoX platform built on Polygon. According to the developers, the attacker exploited a bug in the swap-contract code — it allowed him to inflate the MONO token price, and then acquire with it “all the other assets in the pool”.
“Security has always been a top priority for us. Over three months we tested the platform, launched a bug-bounty program, and conducted three audits before launch. During these checks, all high-risk elements were promptly fixed,” the developers wrote after the incident.
Hoskinson also noted the auditors who failed to detect the critical vulnerability.
I heard twenty good engineers told them it was solid…..
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) December 2, 2021
“I heard that twenty good engineers told them that the code was reliable,” he wrote.
On December 2, an unknown hacker breached the DeFi protocol Badger DAO. PeckShield estimates the damage at more than $120 million — the attacker withdrew ~2100 BTC and 151 ETH.
The hacker presumably exploited a bug in the user interface. The project team paused all smart contracts and is investigating the incident. The developers also engaged Chainalysis experts and notified U.S. and Canadian law enforcement authorities.
For now, the pause on smart contracts continues in order to prevent further withdrawals. Badger will share further updates as soon as they are available.
— ₿adgerDAO 🦡 (@BadgerDAO) December 2, 2021
In September 2021, IOHK activated the Alonzo upgrade, which enabled deploying smart contracts on Cardano’s mainnet. However, the blockchain currently hosts virtually no live decentralized applications.
One of the most high-profile Cardano-based projects — SundaeSwap — will begin testing its decentralized exchange (DEX) on December 5.
Good luck to all the @sundaeswap team & community with their #Cardano testnet launch, announced for this weekend. We’ve been happy to collab with the team on their plans. You can read more here: 1/3 https://t.co/7iRifId9YS
— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) December 1, 2021
The platform is publicly backed by IOHK, unlike MuesliSwap. The latter announced the launch of its platform in late November, portraying it as the first decentralized exchange on Cardano.
Back in September, Emurgo — the Hoskinson-backed company — said it would invest $100 million in developing DeFi and non-fungible tokens in the blockchain ecosystem.