Music Platform Audius (AUDIO) Hacked for $6M Via Proposal Exploit

• All smart contracts on the Audius were temporarily suspended on July 24th.
• The hacker exploited the community voting system with a fake proposal of 18M tokens.
• The Audius (AUDIO) system is largely back up and running, except for staking & delegation contracts.

Independent music streaming service Audius (AUDIO) encountered a major setback yesterday when governance proposal #85 was maliciously confirmed on the company’s website.

Hackers managed to loot over 18 million of the platform’s native Audius (AUDIO) token. At its current exchange rate, the tokens are worth an approximate $6.2 million, however, after the fraudster decided to swap the Audius (AUDIO) into Ethereum (ETH), the attacker got away with slightly more than $1 million dollars.

Audius CEO Deems the Vote Illicit

Commenting on the situation, Audius CEO Roneil Rumburg cofirmed the situation: “This was an exploit – not a proposal proposed or passed through any legitimate means.” Later, the music sharing platform posted a post-mortem analysis of the hack on their blog.

Although the set of contracts active on Audius platform were verified by two separate audit companies—OpenZeppelin in 2020 and Kudelski in 2021—the bug that allowed the hacker to take control of the system seemingly went undetected.

Audius’ (AUDIO) Price Plummets

However, the music streaming platform’s troubles didn’t end there, as the hacker dumped $6 million worth of the company’s native tokens, making off with a comparatively small portion of the pie at $1 million Ethereum (ETH). Investors are advocating for immediate buyback opportunities in fears of a further decline in the price of Audius (AUDIO).

At press time, Audius (AUDIO) trades at $0.330352, having depreciated 2.8% in the last 24 hours, and 6.5% since last week, according to CoinGecko. Year-to-date, the decentralized music platform’s native token is drowning in a sea of red, having declined in value by 70.2% since 2021.

Bringing Music & Blockchain Together

The Audius decentralized music platform gives users the opportunity to upload their own music independently, without a third party. Musicians are paid in Audius (AUDIO), enabling them to stake it, send tips, and buy NFTs.

The blockchain music platform was among the first to appreciate the breakout of NFTs, and soon adopted music NFTs into its ecosystem. Recently, the company presented the ‘Audius Passport‘, an NFT that can be used to identify members in various spaces of the limitless Web 3.0 world.

Why You Should Care

With the crypto industry experiencing one of the most active bouts of hacking so far in 2022, it’s important to monitor how crypto projects deal with such malicious exploits. Rumors on Twitter suggest that the hack could have been carried out by the infamous Lazarus Group of North Korea.