Over the past 24 hours, from April 16 to April 17, 2024, the price of the Railgun (RAIL) token and the trading volume for this position have collapsed. This happened against the backdrop of a new round of scandal that the hacker group Lazarus Group used the protocol for money laundering.
The project team completely denies this:
This is not true and it's false reporting. Firstly, that group is blocked from using the RAILGUN system by the “Private Proofs of Innocence” system which went live over a year ago. Secondly, it was a mistaken, false allegation in the first place.
— RAILGUN — Private & Anonymous DeFi (@RAILGUN_Project) April 16, 2024
The essence of the situation
April 15, 2024 journalist Colin Wu noticed to the fact that the co-founder of the Ethereum project, Vitalik Buterin, constantly uses the services of the RAILGUN privacy protocol.
Buterin himself commented on the situation, noting that “privacy is okay.” He also mentioned the system of proof of innocence, which appeared on the site in November 2023.
Wu later cited an FBI report that hackers from the North Korean Lazarus Group used RAILGUN to launder money stolen from the Harmony Bridge hack.
The project team commented on these accusations, noting that they are false. The community asked the protocol developers to provide convincing evidence.
Market reaction
Despite the fact that the FBI report is dated January 2023, Wu’s statement, as well as the situation as a whole, significantly affected the rate of the project’s native token, Railgun (RAIL).
In 24 hours, its price dropped by more than 11%, according to CoinMarketCap. Trading volume decreased by 88.6%.
According to DeFiLlama, the total value locked (TVL) of the project decreased from $33.73 million to $31.64 million:
Source: Cryptocurrency
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