Osmosis halt: Latest updates.

A couple of days ago, I posted that the Osmosis chain had been halted, and some funds exploited from it. Since then, much has come out about the extent and methods used, the main cause of the issue and remedy steps underway. The chain remains halted, likely for another day or two it appears. To bring yourself up to speed, here is my original post on the matter.

What is known so far.

Roughly $5 million was taken. This equates to around 2.5% of the Dex's TVL.
At least one of the culprits has come forward - roughly $2 million will be returned to the protocol.
Bug fix is currently undergoing testing and safety checks.
The issue arose from the recent chain upgrade, and an error in the code that allowed people to remove more funds than they deposited into LP positions. A very simple error that was not picked up in testing of the upgrade.
In light of the error, the Dev fund will make up any shortfall of funds that can't be recovered.
Osmosis state that authorities have been contacted over the matter, and urge anyone that profited from the bug to come forward.
A validator team (not on Osmosis but other Cosmos chains) has publicly admitted to being involved. Two members of their team allegedly made numerous TX's to turn $226 into around $2 million. These are the funds mentioned above and are being returned. This validator will not be participating in the Cosmos eco-system as a validator in the future.

Dear osmosiszone community, many of you know about the Osmosis LP bug that occurred yesterday.
In disbelief of it being real, two members of fire_stake started testing to see if the bug existed, testing grew into a temporary lapse in good judgment, and...

in the process, we managed to convert $226 USD to ~$2M. We were thinking about our family's future, and not the future of our community. Shortly after doing so, we stressed throughout the night about how we can set things right. We’re currently working with the Osmosis team...

to return the funds as soon as possible. We’re also working with the Osmosis team to encourage anyone else who took advantage of this situation to please come forward and return funds.
You’re welcome to come to us, and we can help act as a liaison. We need to make this right.

Quotes from this tweet thread posted by Fire stake validators

The above outlines how this team stumbled in to the bug, and rather than reporting it as an eco-system participant should, they took advantage of it. Ultimately, they will lose their validation business. There was a brief attempt to transfer ownership to "new operators", but community suspicion that this was simply a name change rather than transferring operations to new owners has lead to the team announcing they are shutting down operations.

Important note, If you delegate to Fire stake on any Cosmos chain, you need to redelegate to someone else ASAP. Their operations across 10 chains are being closed down.

Blah, blah, blah - WEN restart?

Yesterday, it was said in an update thread posted yesterday by the official Osmosis Zone account that it would be at least 2 more days before they would restart. The patches to fix the bug are being extensively tested prior to restart. The Dev team took responsibility for the error that enabled this exploit, and suggested that an increased focus on security over speed of development will be adopted in the future.

The bug itself was simple, and involved incorrect calculation of LP shares when adding and removing liquidity from pools.
It should have been caught. It was painfully overlooked in internal testing that was focused on more advanced functionality related to the upgrade.

The core development teams contributing to Osmosis take full responsibility for this oversight.
This is reflected by the strategic reserve taking responsibility for any lost funds, and not the community pool.

So, as this tweet thread was yesterday, expect Osmosis to be down for another 24 - 48 hours it seems.

Are funds SAFU on Osmosis?

This exploit could have been much worse. It seems a few people opportunistically took advantage of it, without much forethought or planning on how to shift the funds undetected and what the consequences could be. Once discovered, the validators acted very quickly to minimize the damage by halting the chain. While some may argue that a chain that can be halted by co-ordination of the validator set is not decentralized, this sort of functionality is a feature of Cosmos chains.

The first "loss of funds" event for Osmosis is a minor one, and the result of a fairly simple (but obviously significant) error. So far, the core technology the chain relies on of IBC transfers remains standing as having not been exploited or hacked successfully yet.

Personally, I think this is a bit of a wake up call for the dev team, to role changes out more carefully, and pay more attention to testing all functionality prior to any upgrade, not just the functions being changed. Many DeFi projects of significance have had to go through a "baptism of fire" style event, and have come out stronger on the other side.

The big risk for me remains the bridge. The number of bridge exploits we have seen makes me feel that bridging from ETH is the highest risk area for Osmosis at this time. Osmosis doesn't use Oracles, which always seem to cause issues, so the bridge looks like the concern to me. I have heard good things about the Axelar bridge that is the primary one in use. Probably should do some more research into them to ease my concerns.

So there you have it, a summary of the last couple of days for Osmosis. Expect another day or two before the chain comes back on line and producing blocks once again. All losses will be made whole, either by recovering funds from those responsible, or from the strategic reserves.

Thanks for reading,

JK.

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