Hacker arbitrarily created 5 million USD token ZK after taking over the ZKsync management account.

On April 15, layer-2 platform ZKSync confirmed an attack on admin accounts, allowing hackers to exploit an airdrop distribution contract to arbitrarily mint $5 million worth of ZK tokens. According to an announcement from ZKsync’s official X account, this is an isolated issue, which does not affect user assets.

After investigating, ZKsync said the compromised account had administrative rights with three airdrop contracts. The attacker took advantage of a function called ‘sweepUnclaimed()’ to create 111 million unclaimed ZK tokens, causing the circulating supply to increase by 0.45%. As of the latest update, the majority of tokens are still under the control of hackers.

ZKsync is currently collaborating with the SEAL security alliance to recover assets. The project asserts that governance contracts and the main token are unaffected, while also stating that the vulnerability from the sweepUnclaimed() function has been locked and is no longer exploitable.

ZKsync is a layer-2 protocol on Ethereum, utilizing zero-knowledge rollups technology to process batch transactions. According to DefiLlama, as of April 15, the ZKsync Era platform is holding a total locked value of (TVL) of approximately 57.3 million USD. Previously, ZKsync began the airdrop process of 17.5% of the total supply of ZK tokens to the community.

ZK price drops 7% after the incident

The ZK token has experienced significant volatility following the announcement of the hack. Around 8:00 PM on April 15, ( Vietnam time ), the price of ZK dropped by as much as 16% to $0.040, before slightly recovering to $0.047. However, ZK still saw a total decline of 7% over the past 24 hours.

ZK token price | Source: CoingeckoIn the first quarter of 2025 alone, the total losses from hacking incidents in the cryptocurrency sector have reached 2 billion USD – only 300 million USD lower than the entire year of 2024.

You can check the ZK price here.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Investors should conduct thorough research before making any decisions. We are not responsible for your investment decisions.

• ZKsync officially launches a new governance model with on-chain contracts.
• ZKsync releases a roadmap for 2025 with the goal of improving performance and security.
• The TVL of ZKSync has surged significantly thanks to the allocation of 300 million tokens to boost DeFi.

Thach Sanh

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