Circle under fire as $230M in stolen USDC flows unblocked days after freezing legitimate accounts
Circle faces criticism for allowing $230M in stolen USDC to flow through its system after quickly freezing legitimate accounts in a separate case.Summary
Stablecoin issuer Circle is under scrutiny after failing to block $230 million in USDC stolen during the $285 million Drift Protocol exploit on Solana. This inaction contrasts sharply with Circle’s recent freeze of USDC balances in unrelated corporate hot wallets due to a civil case. Critics question the inconsistency, asking why Circle aggressively enforces compliance against legitimate businesses but allows a large-scale theft to proceed through its infrastructure. While some argue against active blacklisting to preserve decentralization, the incident highlights a tension between centralized control and permissionless systems within the crypto market. The Drift exploit, a sophisticated weeks-long operation, involved compromising the protocol’s Security Council and manipulating oracles to drain vaults, causing a significant drop in Drift’s Total Value Locked (TVL). Security experts suspect North Korean hackers, specifically the Lazarus Group, are behind the attack, adding to a growing trend of state-sponsored crypto thefts.
(Source：CryptoSlate)