What is Wormhole

Wormhole is a cross-chain bridge protocol that supports multi-chain information transfer. It currently facilitates asset cross-chain transfers and communication among 22 blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, and Arbitrum.

Portal Bridge

Portal Bridge is the cross-chain bridge of the Wormhole protocol, supporting both token and NFT cross-chain transfers. It uses a 【Lock + Mint】 approach for asset cross-chain transfer. Therefore, involved in the asset transfer process are the participants who lock and mint assets.

In terms of cross-chain communication, Portal employs a 【Unilateral Verification】 scheme. Transaction information is observed and verified by a group of validator nodes (guardian network). These nodes include well-known third-party infrastructure providers such as Certus One, ChainodeTech, and Figment. Once verified, the transaction information is updated on the target chain, enabling cross-chain message passing.

The specific process for asset cross-chain transfer via Portal Bridge is as follows:

Security Incidents

Wormhole, as a representative cross-chain bridge using the 【Lock + Mint】 scheme, has suffered serious security attacks.

On February 2, 2022, Wormhole was hacked, resulting in a loss of 120,000 wETH (approximately $320 million). This attack ranked second among all cross-chain bridge attacks in 2022 and was the largest DeFi hack at that time.

The hacker exploited a vulnerability in Wormhole’s code to freely mint 120,000 wETH on Solana. wETH is pegged 1:1 with ETH, but the wETH minted by the hacker was not backed by any equivalent ETH, effectively creating an additional 120,000 wETH. This caused a significant imbalance in the price of wETH. Meanwhile, the hacker transferred 93,750 wETH back to Ethereum via the cross-chain bridge and exchanged the remaining wETH on Solana for SOL and USDC. Subsequently, the Wormhole team contacted the hacker and offered a $10 million bounty in hopes of recovering the stolen funds, but to no avail.

After the incident, Wormhole’s parent company Jump Trading intervened, replacing the stolen funds, helping Wormhole resolve the crisis, and restoring operations. Following this major incident, Wormhole launched a $10 million bug bounty program on ImmuneFi to enhance its protocol security. **$ETHW **$STETH **$VET **