The Factom protocol DeFi platform suffered a 51% Attack, and the Hacker claims it was a goodwill test.

Recently, a decentralized finance stablecoin network platform based on the Factom protocol suffered a 51% attack. According to reports, four miners collaborated to control 70% of the total computing power and altered the platform's data.

The process of this attack was quite dramatic. Initially, the attackers' wallet balance was only $11. They manipulated the price of a yen-pegged stablecoin, rapidly inflating their balance to $6.7 million. They then converted these funds into a dollar-pegged stablecoin. However, when they attempted to further exchange and disperse the funds in the spot trading system, they encountered failure.

Regarding this incident, an executive of the relevant company stated that the attacker's actions only affected the balance in their own wallet. Due to the protocol design not allowing for the rapid transfer of large amounts of assets, the attacker was unable to transfer these artificially created stablecoins outside of the network or conduct large-scale sell-offs.

According to the platform, the attack lasted for about 20 minutes, but did not affect the safety of other users' funds.

Interestingly, after the attack failed, these "hackers" actively contacted the platform's official team. They claimed that this action was actually a "malicious penetration test" aimed at identifying potential vulnerabilities in the system and providing feedback to the core development team. As a gesture of goodwill, they also destroyed all the problematic stablecoins generated during this process.

The platform that is under attack is a decentralized, non-custodial stablecoin network. Its design concept is to be pegged to various world currencies and assets, including gold, euro, and US dollar. The platform emphasizes that its system is fully auditable and open-source, aiming to facilitate convenient value transfers and asset conversions.

This event once again highlights the challenges that decentralized finance systems face in terms of security, while also demonstrating the effectiveness of certain security mechanisms. Although the attackers successfully manipulated some data, due to the design constraints of the system, they ultimately could not convert this manipulation into actual benefits. This case may provide valuable lessons for the security design of future DeFi projects.