If there¡¯s one thing more shocking than the fact that a hacker was able to exploit a software bug and drain some $320 million worth of cryptocurrency from something called Wormhole, it¡¯s this: Backers of the project were able to replace the pilfered tokens in a matter of hours.
In another, not-so-distant era, this was the type of coding bug that could have threatened to put a traditional financial firm out of business. In fact, that almost happened to Knight Capital Group Inc. a decade ago. The electronic market-maker was driven to the brink of bankruptcy by some bad code, before a dramatic bailout among many of Wall Street¡¯s best-known shops allowed it to avoid Chapter 11. The firm was later taken over by a rival.
In the case of Wormhole, the problem with the code turned out to be almost as disastrous as the one that forced Knight to seek a $400 million cash infusion to survive. Yet the move-fast-and-break things ethos of the crypto world was met with a startling move-fast-and-fix things response this time. Jump Trading Group, which helped develop Wormhole, put up the money to replace the 120,000 wETH, or ¡°wrapped ether,¡± that the hacker was able to create and then abscond with.
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