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Ankr

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[VERIFIED][src:defillama]

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anchored·4fnUf8…jPcf

Summary

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

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    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.

    Provenance & Audit Trail
    Anchored on SolanaVerify on-chain17 Wayback Archivessrc:defillama

    Decision Log

    This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain (3 events). 17 of 20 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.

    full audit log →version history →

    model: claude-sonnet-4-6

    generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:46 AM

    last updated: 8/30/2026, 5:14:12 AM

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