Hacker siphons $15 million from unfinished DeFi project Eminence

From the new DeFi project by Andre Cronje, a hacker siphoned off $15 million, exploiting the ecosystem deployed for testing.

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3/x 5. We posted the first clan «Spartans». And I went to bed.

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6. Around ~3AM I was messaged awake to find out a) almost 15m was deposited into the contracts b) the contracts were exploited for the full 15m and c) 8m was sent to my yearn: deployer account.

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— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) September 29, 2020

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Eminence developers describe it as ‘an economy for a multigame universe’.

The day before, Cronje and the team completed the project’s concept and rolled out interim Ethereum contracts for continued testing. They also published art teasers of the project.

According to Cronje, Eminence was at least three weeks from launch.

During the night he was awakened by a message that users had deposited $15 million into the contracts, which the hacker had fully withdrawn. The hacker returned $8 million to Cronje, sending it to the deployment account on yEarn Finance.

He has already promised to distribute these funds among users based on a balance snapshot taken before the hack.

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As I am receiving a fair amount of threats, I have asked yearn treasury to assist with refunding the 8m the hacker sent. The multisig is safer and as such I feel more comfortable with them having the funds. Funds will be returned to holders pre-hack snapshot. https://t.co/wbputn5hYD

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— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) September 29, 2020

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Cronje noted that neither the contracts nor the ecosystem were final. He described their deployment as a routine ‘in-product testing’ practice.

A user in the comments noted that Cronje retweeted one of the project’s teasers 15 minutes before the hack, when he supposedly went to sleep.

Famed trader Alex Krüger pointed to a particular sequence of actions:

• creating hype;
• aggressive promotion to attract investors’ attention;
• launch of an unfinished product;
• the hack.

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The $EMN Story

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#1 Build up hype

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#2 Finish concept

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#3 Deploy contract day after using Yearn’s account, allowing people to identify it / invest in it. Product unfinished

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#4 Hype it via Twitter, feed a buying frenzy

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#5 Token hacked, $16 million stolenhttps://t.co/SPtEgtSRsI

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— Alex Krüger (@krugermacro) September 29, 2020

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Earlier on the ForkLog channel Tone Vays said that all DeFi projects are nothing more than Ponzi schemes.

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