Wemix has refuted allegations of a cover-up following a delay in disclosing a $6.2 million bridge hack.
Over the four days leading up to the breach announcement, the Wemix token dropped sharply by about 40%.
Kim Seok-hwan, who leads the Wemix Foundation, stated that they had no intention of keeping the bridge hack a secret, despite it causing losses surpassing $6 million.
While addressing the media, Kim insisted that they did not cover up the incident, but attendees pointed out that they made the announcement later than expected.
On February 28, hackers exploited the Play Bridge Vault, a mechanism for moving WEMIX between blockchains, and stole over 8.6 million tokens. The company did not make an official statement about the attack until four days later.
Kim justified the delay by citing concerns about potential follow-up attacks and the need to prevent market panic over the theft.
The breach, as Wemix disclosed, resulted from the hacker stealing an authentication key used to oversee Nile, their non-fungible token (NFT) platform.
Two months after the theft, the hacker, having prepared in advance, began generating abnormal transactions at random.
Out of 15 withdrawal attempts, the hackers completed 13, seized 8.6 million WEMIX tokens, and cashed them out on overseas exchanges.
Kim reported that they immediately deactivated their servers and launched an analysis as soon as they became aware of the attack.
The executive further explained that they had officially reported the unknown hacker to the Cyber Investigation Team under the Seoul National Police Agency.
The Wemix CEO reported that the authorities had already started investigating the situation.
Kim explained that an early announcement could have led to unintended consequences.
Without understanding how the system was compromised, they could still face future attacks, the CEO noted.
He further stressed that the market had already absorbed some effects from the stolen assets, and a premature announcement could have triggered panic-driven sales.
While addressing the press, the executive took responsibility for delaying the disclosure, apologized to Wemix investors, and stated that any fallout from the decision would fall on him.
From the day of the security breach to March 4, WEMIX dropped nearly 40% in value, despite the company’s attempt to delay the announcement to prevent market panic.
The asset’s price plummeted from $0.70 on February 27 to as low as $0.52 on February 28.
The price dropped to $0.42 on March 4, and although it is currently at $0.58, this still represents a 17% decrease from its pre-hack value.
The company announced on X on March 14 that, to swiftly recover from the WEMIX PLAY Bridge incident and bring stability to the service and ecosystem, it will begin the buyback execution.
The company will reveal the buyback method, the exchanges where it took place, the final amount, and the wallet address for the purchased tokens after completing the process.
