Binance Hack: Arbitrum Blocks $30.5 Million Through Emergency Response

Part of the loot put out of reach. The Arbitrum Security Council has tied up approximately $30.5 million related to the Binance hack, according to the report released by Arbitrum overnight. The transaction involves ETH and ARB tokens held on Arbitrum One. It relies on the network's emergency powers, which allowed assets to be moved without the signature of the address holder. This is the general mobilization in crypto to limit the impact of hacking.

Key Points

The Security Council moved 8,425 ETH and almost 74.56 million ARB to a blocking address.

According to Arbitrum, a vote of its governance is necessary to move these funds again.

The intervention did not affect other users' funds or their applications, the network said.

ZachXBT valued the total tied up at this point at more than $2.83 billion after the Binance hack.

The intervention took place on October 30 at 00:08 UTC, or 1:08 a.m. in Paris. The report published on the Arbitrum forum describes the transfer of 8,425 ETH and 74,559,805.2 ARB from an address identified as linked to the hack.

The assets are now located on a dedicated address, ending with 0DA0. They have not yet been returned to Binance: their immobilization and their reimbursement constitute two separate operations. According to the report, only a vote from the ArbitrumDAO governance can authorize their movement.

To intervene, the Council temporarily modified the Inbox contract on Ethereum, which participates in the transmission of messages to Arbitrum. This modification made it possible to execute two transactions in the name of the address concerned, then immediately restore the contract to its initial version.

This is therefore not a freeze decided by the issuer of a stablecoin. The Council used network modification capabilities to transfer the funds. Arbitrum claims that this targeted action did not affect any other users or applications.

A relief mechanism that underlines the powers of the Council

Arbitrum One is a network built on top of Ethereum to facilitate transactions. Its governance, however, retains a rapid intervention mechanism: a Security Council of twelve members, nine of whom must approve emergency action.

The documentation provides for immediate execution of these measures, followed by a transparency report. These powers make it possible to respond to critical vulnerabilities, without waiting for an ordinary voting procedure to take place.

In the Binance case, this capability made it possible to immobilize assets that the hacker could otherwise have continued to move. It also reminds that the guarantees offered to holders depend on the architecture of the network: the possibilities of intervention on Arbitrum differ from those of a transfer of ETH carried out directly on Ethereum.

After this operation, ZachXBT increased its tally to more than $2.83 billion frozen across the entire hack. This figure corresponds to its balance sheet at the time of publication, and not to an amount definitively recovered or reimbursed.