According to data from Chainalysis, illicit money flows have recently accounted for nearly 2% of total circulation on Ethereum. From July 30 to August 5, the index often fluctuated from 1.7% to 1.82%, before returning to normal on August 6. It broke the record in January, when illicit money flows accounted for 1.46% of total circulation on the platform.
It is unclear why the illicit money flow suddenly surged, but it seems to be related to the Curve Finance attack that shocked the DeFi community last week.
Last week, Curve Finance, the leading DeFi platform on Ethereum, suffered a mass attack within 24 hours, causing heavy losses. The Curve hacker recently started returning assets, raising hope for recovery. However, the hacker only returned stolen funds from Alchemix and JPEGd, and did not return the rest.
On Aug. 4, the attacker even posted a message on the Ethereum network, seemingly directed at the Alchemix and Curve development teams. In it, the attacker claimed they would return the funds, but only because they didn’t want to “ruin” the projects involved, not because the attacker had gotten caught.
Curve Finance is offering a bug bounty reward to anyone who can help identify the exploiter behind the hack.