FTX Impact by Hack! Solana Protocol Serum Upgrade Key Leakage, Forking to Avoid Attack

Shortly after FTX announced bankruptcy, reports emerged of a hacker attack. Apart from significant fund losses, this incident also led to the leakage of the upgrade key for DEX Serum on Solana. To prevent potential malicious attacks, Serum had to resort to a fork as a temporary solution.

Serum to Fork Due to Key Compromise

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko tweeted on the 13th that due to a key compromise on the Serum DEX on Solana, Serum's development team is forking the protocol.

The compromise of Serum's private keys was a result of an attack on FTX, where unauthorized access led to the outflow of assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars from FTX. Report: FTX loses funds! Several Twitter celebrities warn FTX App hacked, funds liquidated: Delete the app for security

A developer known as Mango Max is leading the fork, stating in atweet that Serum's upgrade keys are not controlled by Serum DAO but by a private key linked to FTX.

With uncertainty surrounding who controls the upgrade keys, there is no guarantee that Serum will not be deployed with malicious code, prompting the need for the fork.

Meanwhile, many Solana protocols that rely on Serum functionality have announced halting the use of Serum as a liquidity source, such as Dex aggregator Jupiter and NFT marketplace Magic Eden.

Major Trading Pairs Market Launched

The latest deployed version of Serum has been confirmed, with Mango Max stating that major trading pairs markets have gone live, including SOL/USDC, USDT/USDC, MSOL/USDC, and ETH/USDC. Additionally, Solana protocols like Jupiter, Mango Market, OpenSerum, and Solape are integrating with Serum's forked version.

However, Mango Max noted that this is a temporary solution, and future improvements will be decided in collaboration with the community.