Holograph suffered a hacker attack, causing the market value of HLG to plummet by 80% within 9 hours

The Holograph Operator contract was exploited by a malicious actor, allowing the hacker to mint an additional 1 billion HLG tokens. This caused the native token of the HLG blockchain tokenization platform, Holograph, to drop by 79.4%.

HLG has been severely affected

According to Etherscan data, a hacker exploited a smart contract vulnerability to mint 1 billion HLG tokens in nine transactions—the first minting occurred on June 13th at 9:47 AM UTC.

Out of these 1 billion HLG tokens, 700 million were minted in seven batches, each consisting of 100 million tokens. Etherscan data indicates that these 10 billion HLG tokens were valued at $14.4 million USD during the initial minting.

HLG's price began to plummet just 10 minutes after the initial minting. According to TradingView data, within nine hours, the token dropped by 79.4% from $0.014 to a local low of $0.0029, while HLG's market capitalization plummeted from nearly $22 million USD to $4.8 million USD during this period. Subsequently, HLG experienced a slight recovery to $0.008 USD.

HLG's price change over the past 24 hours. Source: TradingView

Based on the current price, the 1 billion HLG tokens are valued at $7.4 million. However, the hacker has already started converting the minted HLG tokens into the stablecoin Tether.

The transactions where the hacker minted 1 billion HLG tokens in nine transactions. Source: Etherscan

The hacker may be an insider at Holograph

Cryptocurrency researcher Matt Casto from venture capital firm CMT Digital believes that the hacker is a "rogue developer" who funded Holograph's operator contract address 26 days ago. However, Holograph has not responded immediately as to whether they know the identity of the hacker, for reasons unknown.

The cryptocurrency market faces increased security risks once again

As of 2024, hackers have stolen over $200 million worth of cryptocurrency in various incidents, marking a significant increase from the previous year. This includes a series of attacks primarily targeting decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. In February alone, over $67 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen in multiple incidents, with Ethereum being the most targeted blockchain.
In 2023, hackers stole approximately $1.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency across various incidents, a decrease from $3.7 billion in 2022. This decline can be attributed in part to improved industry security measures and a reduction in successful large-scale attacks on DeFi protocols.
Recent frequent cryptocurrency market hacking incidents have put pressure on regulatory authorities to expedite the development and implementation of stricter regulatory policies to protect investors and enhance market transparency and security.