On December 11, 2021, AscendEX exchange discovered unauthorized transfers of $77 million from its hot wallets across Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon due to compromised private keys, likely via phishing or malware.

According to the official announcement, some ERC-20, BSC and Polygon tokens of AscendEX were abnormally transferred out of the hot wallet of the exchange, and the cold wallet of AscendEX was not affected by this incident. It is estimated that Pinnacle AscendEX’s losses totaled US$77.7 million (of which US$60 million was on Ethereum, US$9.2 million was on BSC, and US$8.5 million was on Polygon).