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anchored·4fnUf8…jPcfSummary
Ankr is a Web3 infrastructure and liquid staking protocol founded in 2017, providing RPC endpoints for over 75 blockchains and BNB Chain-based liquid staking products. In December 2022, a former employee executed a supply chain attack that compromised Ankr's private deployer key, enabling unlimited minting of aBNBc tokens and resulting in approximately $5 million in direct losses, with cascading secondary losses of roughly $19 million through Helio Protocol's HAY stablecoin depeg. Ankr subsequently compensated affected users, implemented multi-signature controls, and continues to operate, though questions persist over the completeness of user reimbursement.
Connected Entities
4 entities · 60 linked investigations- Ankr→mentioned with→Ethereum(65%)
- Ankr→mentioned with→Binance(65%)
- Ankr→mentioned with→ZachXBT(70%)
- Binance→mentioned with→Ethereum(65%)
- ZachXBT→mentioned with→Ethereum(70%)
- ZachXBT→mentioned with→Binance(60%)
Timeline(13 events)
2017
Ankr founded by Chandler Song, Ryan Fang, and Stanley Wu.
March 2019
ANKR token launched via ICO on Binance Launchpad, raising approximately $18.7 million.
2019
Ankr mainnet released.
2020
Ankr launches Stkr liquid staking protocol, introducing aBNBc and related derivatives.
December 2022
Former Ankr employee's malicious supply chain code activates upon a legitimate software update, exfiltrating the deployer private key.
2 December 2022
Attacker deploys malicious aBNBc contract and mints approximately 60 trillion aBNBc tokens. PeckShield flags exploit at 12:35 UTC. Approximately $5 million extracted via PancakeSwap and bridged to Ethereum. aBNBc price crashes ~99.5%.
2 December 2022
Secondary exploit against Helio Protocol: attackers use collapsed aBNBc as collateral to drain approximately $15.5 million from Helio's HAY stablecoin pool via an unupdated price oracle. HAY depegs to $0.20.
2 December 2022
Approximately 3,360 ETH laundered through Tornado Cash; additional 900 BNB sent through Tornado Cash.
2 December 2022
Ankr issues public statement confirming exploit, requests trading halt on aBNBc, announces compensation plan.
21 December 2022
Ankr formally attributes attack to a former team member, announces law enforcement referral, and details new multi-signature security controls.
2023
Victims group publicly alleges Ankr provided only 50% reimbursement to users affected through Stader and pStake protocols.
2024
Ankr's Asphere enterprise arm achieves SOC 2 Type 1 compliance.
2025
Ankr's Asphere achieves SOC 2 Type 2 compliance. No public confirmation of prosecution of the former employee has been reported.
Decision Log
- hash: 9e9TDMXKDRbn5ePghK8eBMPG1ZWigzGZsjPMPbW1hKVp
- hash: AqrHcu4zqecH9PBRDbmZrFGhqrDpFYMH5noBhYc33RRz
- hash: 44EDSHq2t28nEkLFic9LE2947m52hSXKBHi8NSfTxDYS
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain (3 events). 19 of 20 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:46 AM
last updated: 8/30/2026, 8:30:08 PM
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