Solana’s web3.js library was compromised yesterday in a supply chain attack that installed malicious packages capable of stealing the private keys of users and draining their funds.  

The attack was reported by Solana developer @trentdotsol and specifically affected versions 1.95.6 and 1.95.7 of the Solana web3.js library.

Since then, a wave of Solana-based developers have come out to confirm they are not impacted by the exploit. Unaffected firms include Solflare, Phantom Wallet, and Helium. 

Solana’s web3.js is a JavaScript library accessible to developers wanting to build Solana-based apps. Reports suggest that maintainers of the library may have been targeted by a phishing campaign as attackers gained access to the “publish-access account.”

Read more: ‘Solana killer’ Sui does Solana things — goes offline for 2 hours

Through this account, the attackers introduced a private key stealer into the two versions of Solana’s web3.js library with an ‘addToQueue’ function that stole under the guise of Cloudflare headers. According to Solscan, the attackers stole close to $160,000.

Solana research firm Anza posted, “This is not an issue with the Solana protocol itself, but with a specific JavaScript client library.” 

It stressed it “only appears to affect projects that directly handle private keys and that updated within the window of 3:20pm UTC and 8:25pm UTC on Tuesday, December 2, 2024.”

It claims the two exploits were “caught within hours and have since been unpublished,” and asked, “all Solana app developers to upgrade to version 1.95.8. Developers pinned to `latest` should also upgrade to 1.95.8.”

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The Sui blockchain, supposedly a viable rival to Solana, was down for over two hours today, causing its native SUI token to drop 5.6%.

The decentralized layer-1 blockchain described as a “Solana Killer,” created its last block at 9:15 am UTC before dropping out. As a result, SUI holders were unable to send the token anywhere. 

During the outage, SUI’s price fell from $3.56 to a low of $3.36. Its price is currently $3.64, according to CoinGecko.

The X account of Flow Finance, a decentralized exchange using the Sui network, said the blockchain was experiencing issues “related to validator operations.”

Read more: Solana wallet Phantom down due to ‘major incident’

“Rest assured, the Sui team is actively working on a resolution. Please note that all your funds are completely SAFU and secure,” it added. 

Currently, the Sui status site claims, “All Systems Operational.” It adds, “v1.37.4 patch has been rolled out on Mysten Validators and announced publicly for immediate rollout.”

An update from Sui posted to X said, “The 2-hour downtime was caused by a bug in transaction scheduling logic that caused validators to crash, which has now been resolved.”

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A Thursday evening tweet of the Chill Guy meme by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele pumped the price of a Solana memecoin by 65% in 90 minutes.

While Bitcoiners interpreted the tweet as a reaction to bitcoin’s rally above $96,000, memecoin traders interpreted the tweet literally.

Although dozens of Chill Guy-named memecoins exist, the largest and most liquid version exists on Solana. Starting at a market capitalization of $300 million as of 9:09pm in El Salvador when Bukele tweeted, crypto traders immediately ran up the coin to a $500 million market cap.

As of publication time, the tweet has earned over 1.4 million views and the associated memecoin has generated over $350 million in 24-hour volume.

Bukele claims that El Salvador became a sovereign bitcoin investor on September 6, 2021. After years of acquisitions, the country now claims to possess 5,940 bitcoin worth over $550 million. With bitcoin at all-time highs, Salvadoran purchases have accreted hundreds of millions of dollars to the country’s treasury.

Historically, Bukele has only spoken publicly about bitcoin and tether, suggesting that his pumping of this small memecoin might have been inadvertent.

Read more: Solana pre-sale meme coin founders abandon their crashing projects

Phillip Banks created the Just A Chill Guy meme in October 2023 and it spread virally on social media, especially TikTok where it enjoys a phrasal template. Chill Guy’s nonchalant smirk, casual attire, and serenity portray an indifferent equanimity amid a variety of otherwise stressful situations.

Earlier today, the meme’s creator Phillip Banks threatened to issue takedown notices for assets or applications that used the character.

Speaking via X, Banks said, “Chill guy has been copyrighted. like, legally. I’ll be issuing takedowns on for-profit-related things over the next few days.”

He clarified, “Not like brand accounts using him as a trend, that’s kinda something I don’t really care about (I do just ask for credit. Or Xboxes), mainly unauthorized merchandise and shitcoins.”

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Trading platform Robinhood has re-listed Solana (SOL) at over $216 a year after it removed the crypto and sold any remaining coins for just $16.

Multiple users on X (formerly Twitter) slated today’s re-listing, which came as Cardano (ADA), PEPE, and XRP were also added to the platform.

“Will never forgive Robinhood for de-listing SOL at $16,” one user said, while crypto sleuth ZachXBT claimed that Robinhood forced its users to sell their coins, causing “massive losses.”

He asked, “What changes will Robinhood be making to regain trust so users are not forced to exit positions again in the future?” 

Read more: How Jump helped US Robinhood users trade offshore at FTX

Robinhood de-listed SOL, ADA and MATIC

On June 7 last year, Robinhood warned it would de-list SOL, ADA, and Polygon (MATIC) from its exchange by June 27. Users were allowed to buy, sell, hold, and transfer any of these three cryptocurrencies up until the deadline. 

After this, “any ADA, MATIC, and SOL still in your Robinhood Crypto account will be sold for market value and the proceeds will be credited to your Robinhood buying power.” It’s worth noting that users living in New York weren’t allowed to transfer their SOL.

ADA was worth roughly $0.28 at the time while SOL was worth just over $16. Today, ADA is worth almost $0.6 (a 114% increase) and SOL is worth over $216 (a 1,250% increase).

Read more: CHART: It’s been 262 days since Solana’s last major outage

At the time, Robinhood claimed it had reviewed its crypto offering before the de-listing. Reports noted that these tokens were identified as securities in a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit accusing Binance and Coinbase of offering unregistered securities.

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Phantom Wallet, one of the most popular Solana wallets, is “currently experiencing an uptime incident.”

The official X (formerly Twitter) account for Phantom has encouraged users who “are in urgent need of making a transaction, please ignore simulation errors and try using a dapp.”

The status page describes this as a “Major Incident” with the backend and further notes that the “Backend seems to be down.” 

Read more: CHART: It’s been 262 days since Solana’s last major outage

According to its incident and maintenance history, the backend was last down earlier this month on October 3.

Crunchbase states that Phantom Wallet has raised approximately $118 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm.

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It has been 262 days — over 37 weeks or more than 6,000 hours — since Solana last suffered a major outage.

According to the network’s own incident history tracker, the last major outage occurred on February 6 this year and lasted five hours. No reason was given at the time, however, the tracker noted that the problem was apparently resolved after “a successful upgrade to v1.17.20 and a restart of the cluster by validator operators.”

As a result of the disruption, Solana’s SOL token fell 2% to $94.

Protos has compiled a chart detailing this and every other Solana outage since its launch.

Read more: Solana mainnet down almost a year after last major outage

The next most recent outage occurred almost a year earlier on February 25, 2023, and was put down to “cluster instability.” Before this, major issues struck the network on September 30, 2022, and June 1, 2022.

Solana launched in 2020 but according to its tracker, it suffered no major disruption until January 2022 — a brief period of “degraded performance.” This was followed in 2022 by a further 26 issues ranging from the aforementioned degraded performance to a far more serious mainnet outage.

Update October 25, 10:46 UTC: Image has been updated to reflect outages as listed in Solana’s detailed tracker.

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A devastating analysis of viral memecoin platform Pump.fun has found that less than 0.002% of its tokens ever sustain even a modest $1 million market capitalization.

Pump.fun has become a hub for the creation and trading of memecoins and since its launch, has hosted the creation of over 1.6 million memecoins while drawing considerable attention from the crypto community.

However, these latest findings highlight the significant mismatch between the marketing promises of the ostensibly democratized Solana coin generator and the reality of finance, where success is exceedingly rare and disproportionately benefits the wealthy.

The point of Pump.fun is to simplify the complex tasks required to mint, list, and market a memecoin on the Solana blockchain. Despite its success at democratizing access to this suite of tools, it hasn’t democratized any aspect of finance or investing.

Indeed, the vast majority — over 99.99% — of these coins fail to achieve any meaningful market value.

According to a new analysis, only 41 out of the 1.7 million memecoins launched on Pump.fun have maintained a market capitalization of over $1 million for several weeks. This represents a mere 0.002% of all tokens created on the platform.

Read more: Pump.fun update means memecoin devs can now livestream their ass

Worse, only 15 tokens rallied past $10 million. The number is so small that it is almost exclusively controlled by wealthy celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and other wealthy investors.

Pump.fun users finally see hard research

After Pump.fun’s social media account posted a brazen message referencing the carnage of dead coins its platform created, complaints from users poured in.

“It’s not fun anymore,” said one user. “99% of people lost money. Either way, you made money,” observed another. “The only people winning here are you guys and the scammers,” another complained.

In perhaps the most apt comment, someone simply noted the financial reality of promoting a worthless meme to suckers: “I had a great time RUGGING everyone.”

In a tone-deaf announcement, Justin Sun decided that today would somehow be the perfect time to launch a Tron blockchain-based memecoin generator to compete with Pump.fun.

Unlimited supply and limited demand

The memecoin market is known for its rapid turnover. Many coins experience brief periods of popularity followed by sharp declines, often driven by speculative investments and fleeting hype.

Pump.fun has faced criticism for contributing to this volatile landscape. The platform’s user-friendly interface and low entry barriers have led to an influx of low-quality memecoins, diluting a market once dominated by old memes like Dogecoin or Rare Pepes. 

Read more: Pump.fun exploiter doxxed himself then took credit with bizarre tweets

Overall, the findings from Pump.fun only further reiterate the waning fad of the 2024 memecoin craze. With ultra-low fees on blockchains like Solana, it’s trivially easy to launch a new memecoin. With infinite dilution comes near-$0 prices. Pump.fun certainly follows that formula.

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There is a conspiracy theory circulating that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a secret backer of Solana.

As the theory goes, Solana founder Anatoly Yakavenko is a Ukrainian immigrant to the US, and for that reason, might be easily swayed by a powerful government agency.

Not only that, he’s not antisemitic and may even be Jewish himself. Given that speculation around Jewish control of various aspects of society is deeply rooted in conspiracy circles, this alone is enough to make claims about Yakavenko’s supposed CIA backing easier to swallow.

Solana famously also sold early allocations of its native SOL token to groups of wealthy, well-connected, and powerful venture capitalists. This, according to the theory, violated the principles of the Cypherpunks and may well have been a way for the CIA to gain alliances at the upper echelons of society.

Read more: Has CZ followed a Solana news account while in prison?

One thing is true: The CIA is active in crypto

Critics of Solana note that the CIA has numerous crypto operations, such as its secretive Swiss cryptography company, Crypto AG. As an intelligence-gathering agency, the CIA surveils communication networks such as Tor and has “a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency,” according to its director’s own admission.

Finally, the theory that Solana is secretly an asset of the CIA is (apparently) further evidenced by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s removal of civil allegations against unregistered sales of SOL tokens. This friendly cooperation between US government agencies ostensibly indicates the involvement of the world’s premier foreign intelligence agency.

Read more: ‘Dead’ Solana DeFi platform still holds $43M of Alameda Research funds

According to conspiracy theorists, all of this explains Solana’s curious rise to power, market-beating rally, and ability to survive beyond its initial dismissal as a so-called ‘Sam coin.’ Prior to the collapse of FTX, most people simply assumed that Solana was useful primarily because Sam Bankman-Fried supported it.

However, Bankman-Fried is now in prison, and Solana has rallied over 11X since his empire collapsed in November 2022.

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The X account of Binance’s former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, has apparently become active again and has followed a Solana news account, despite Zhao being in prison.

Federal inmates are prohibited from using mobile phones. Indeed, for the most part, he seems to have stuck by this and has not posted anything since May 22.

His X account following @solananew, however, brings this into question and raises questions about how it could’ve happened. To begin with, Zhao may have been able to acquire a mobile phone in prison and log into his account. 

Prisoners smuggling phones into prison is a commonly reported issue. According to Forbes, it’s easier to smuggle a phone into a minimum or low-security prison, such as the FCI Lompoc II prison where Zhao is currently being held. 

Alternatively, Zhao may have given someone else access to his X account — although he’s not notified his followers that this is the case. The Federal Bureau of Prisons proposed criminalizing this act and is considering making it a high-risk violation alongside fighting and damaging property. 

It proposed to ban ‘accessing, using, or maintaining social media, or directing others to establish or maintain social media accounts on the inmate’s behalf.’

Read more: Ryan Salame gets longer prison sentence than CZ

Someone may have even hacked into his account, an act that happens too often on X. There may even be an electronic device, such as a computer or tablet, already on-site that he could’ve logged onto.

Zhao’s last tweet congratulated Binance’s current CEO Richard Teng on a pizza he made for Bitcoin Pizza Day. He’s scheduled to be released on September 29.

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Over the past few weeks, Solana has been dominated by a series of quick celebrity-endorsed cash grabs, in a memecoin frenzy that refuses to run out of steam.

Kicked off by WIF, BONK, and a variety of political-themed tokens — which are generally down from their peaks in early spring — Solana’s meme coin launchpad pump.fun is still seeing plenty of action, raking in more fees than the entire Ethereum network earlier this week.

Read more: $10M accidentally burned as Solana memecoin craze continues

More recently, the focus has been on so-called ‘celebcoins,’ which may or may not be endorsed by their namesake. Caitlyn Jenner’s JENNER token began the trend before Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER reached a market cap of over $100 million. Other tokens were promoted via apparent hacks of celebrity social media accounts.

All this activity has eclipsed Solana’s once-promising offering of decentralized finance (DeFi) projects that include lending protocols, decentralized exchanges, and derivatives trading platforms.

Ignoring liquid staking platforms, which simply wrap staked SOL, the total value locked (TVL) of the top three in each of the above categories amounts to around $3.5 billion, according to data from DeFiLlama. The equivalent selection of protocols on Ethereum mainnet total over $25 billion in TVL.

Of the Solana-based examples, though, one protocol stands out in particular.

As noted by X (formerly Twitter) user YouAreMyYield, Solana’s third largest perps platform, 01 Exchange, is in fact a ‘dead’ project, despite still holding $43 million in TVL, mostly made up of neglected Alameda Research funds.

Read more: Solana ‘only’ down for 5 hours but that was plenty of time for memes

In a warning to users, the website’s banner reads ’01 Exchange was winded [sic.] down. Please withdraw your remaining assets. Try a few times if withdrawal doesn’t work first time.’

According to the pseudonymous investigator, the address still holds positions on 01 Exchange worth $38 million in staked mSOL, as well as 6.5 million USDC. YouAreMyYield explains, “The estate emptied the address in April ’23 by removing liquidity on stuff like Raydium and Atrix, but they forgot about the 01 balance.”

But it’s not just Alameda losing change down the back of the sofa.

Another of last cycle’s villains popped back into action when a three-year-old NFT bid from a Three Arrows Capital wallet was accepted earlier today.

Read more: 3AC founder Su Zhu says prison ‘good for you’ after four-month stay 

The bid of 20 ETH (approximately $59,000 at the time of writing), made in August 2021, looks to be a further 20 ETH that won’t make it back to creditors, after Su and Davies’ spectacularly blew up their fund the following year.

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