On Thursday, Jump Crypto, a crypto venture capital firm that owns Certus One, the developer of the Wormhole token bridge, announced it had deposited 120 thousand Ether (ETH) into a Solana-Ethereum bridge that suffered a devastating exploit. The day prior, hackers fraudulently minted 120 thousand wrapped Ether (wETH) worth $321 million on the Solana (SOL) platform, then redeemed 93,750 wETH for ETH on the Ethereum network while swapping the rest for other altcoins on the Solana network.
The cross-chain ETH-wETH is supposed to have an exchange ratio of 1:1 against one another. Therefore, the unauthorized minting of wETH leads to significant inflation, which can quickly degrade confidence in the underlying bridge. After the latest "bailout" by Jump Crypto and a patch fix, however, things appear to be back to normal, with Wormhole developers tweeting: