Hackers have successfully breached Merlin, a decentralized exchange operating on the zkSync solution, and have made off with $1.82 million worth of assets.
The stolen funds were then transferred to USDC and moved from the zkSync network to the Ethereum main network.
The crypto community has appealed to Circle, the company responsible for the USDC stablecoin, to freeze the stolen funds.
It’s worth noting that Merlin’s smart contracts were audited by Certik, but experts failed to detect any vulnerabilities.
However, the fact that funds were withdrawn from the exchange’s liquidity pools is a clear indication of a smart contract code vulnerability.
Certik has a history of conducting audits on projects that have later been hacked, including PancakeBunny, Uranium Finance, and Meerkat Finance.
Merlin, which has recently launched and operates on the zkSync layer 2 solution for Ethereum, has attracted the attention of the entire cryptocurrency community.
The exchange has even signed several partnership agreements and is currently holding a public sale of MAGE tokens.
This incident comes on the heels of the Bitrue cryptocurrency exchange hack, which saw hackers make off with $23 million in assets.