MetisDAO Warns Purchases Made on BNB After Poly Network Exploit are Invalid

The MetisDAO team informed users that token purchases made after the Poly Network hacker’s first sale would not be recognized.

Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution MetisDAO asked users to refrain from buying its native token METIS on BNB Chain, and advised all liquidity providers to pull liquidity from PancakeSwap.

A snapshot was taken of the BNBChain addresses holding METIS at the time of PolyNetwork’s exploit, and at the time of the exploiters first sale of exploited METIS. Addresses buying METIS on BNBChain after the time of the snapshot will not be recognized.

We advise to not interact…

— Metis 🌿 (@MetisDAO) July 5, 2023

The protocol said that a snapshot of user addresses holding METIS at the time of Poly Network exploit would be used to determine which purchases were valid.

“Addresses buying METIS on BNBChain after the time of the snapshot will not be recognized,” said the team.

Earlier this week, Unchained reported that the cross-chain bridge Poly Network had fallen victim to an exploit on Sunday, where the hacker was able to mint billions of tokens out of thin air. While a lack of liquidity made it harder to sell some of these coins, on-chain reserachers from De.Fi found that the hacker managed to cash out $10 million so far.

On Wednesday, analysts at Spot On Chain found that the Poly Network exploiter had sent 8.88 million stolen METIS to four middle wallets and then swapped 5.62 million METIS to the BNB Chain, selling these tokens on decentralized exchange PancakeSwap. This led to significant price arbitrage for METIS due to the limited liquidity available.

🚨🚨🚨 PolyNetwork exploiter is selling $METIS on #Pancakeswap and causes a big arbitrage in the price of $METIS.

The exploiter moved 8.88M $METIS stolen from PolyNetwork: Lock Proxy 0x2f7 3 days ago to 4 mid wallets and has swapped 5.621M $METIS to $BNB over the past 19 hours. pic.twitter.com/h4bRpPb6Bq

— Spot On Chain (@spotonchain) July 5, 2023

Some users took issue with MetisDAO for only warning them not to purchase tokens on BNB three days after the snapshot was taken.

“Why would you have not stated this when the hack first occurred. Now you’ve become the architects of your own downfall by making those who bought tokens on bsc after the hack, worthless. This will deter current and future investors from trusting you going forward,” wrote one user on Twitter.

The MetisDAO team said they had made a formal request to the Poly Network team to reimburse the METIS holders on BNB Chain that were directly impacted by the exploit.