Blockchain security firm CertiK announced that they have managed to freeze $160,000 of the funds stolen in the Merlin rugpull incident. This was a result of the coordinated effort between their team, their partners and the law enforcement of the US and the UK, in an attempt to uncover the Rugpull operators identities.

The Merlin rugpull incident happened on April 25 when the rogue developers used the Owner's Wallet Privilege from the zk-Sync DEX to strip off $1.8 million from user accounts. Since it came from a private key issue and not an exploit, CertiK also places part of the blame on themselves for failing to properly communicate the danger of centralization of that particular DEX.

CertiK made sure to emphasize that audits of smart contracts only serve the purpose of uncovering vulnerabilities and that many projects have had due diligence on centralization flagged with the vast majority of them not leading to an exit scam.

In efforts to prevent such crimes happening in the future and to assist victims, CertiK established a $2 million compensation plan to cover the lost funds of Ragnar participants. The security firm intends for this money to go towards preventing exit scams and aiding hurt parties involved in the incident. Furthermore, they have taken steps to ensure a more accurate representation of projects' risks to their users by prioritizing centralization risks in audit summaries presented to their users from now on.



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