Meme Black Swan: On-chain exchange DEXX hacked

The most sensational event in the circle these days is probably the DEXX incident.

I don't know much about this platform; I only found out about it after seeing many people on Twitter advocating for their rights and then looking up related reports to understand how the platform works.

This is a platform similar to a trading bot, where the main trading targets are various meme coins. The platform uses bots to allow users to trade tokens automatically for profit.

Although I have never participated in this platform, I have tried similar methods before—specifically, I participated in a trading bot on TON.

When I opened this bot, it prompted me to give it my account's private key, and then it could help me trade automatically.

As soon as I saw that it wanted my private key, I immediately closed the bot and stopped paying attention to any such applications.

The reason I closed it is very simple: I will not participate in any application that requires me to hand over my private key, no matter how enticing its claims may be.

According to various comparative information currently available, this incident has led to user losses amounting to tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

Although the truth of the incident is still under further investigation, the increasing number of revealed details allows us to see the issues reflected by the incident:

The security problems caused by centralized custody of private keys.

The security of crypto assets is almost a perennial topic within the ecosystem. Such security incidents occur at least once a year.

The basic reasons for these incidents boil down to three points:

• Lured by high returns

• Users exposing their private keys

• Poor management of private keys.

Among numerous security incidents, their manifestations may not be identical, as they always appear in new forms, but upon careful examination, their essence is the same.

In the DEXX incident, the referrers who participated could earn high commissions, the returns promoted by the platform were very enticing, players participating in the platform had to provide their private keys, and the platform's management of these private keys was centralized.

All these issues occurred.

For such applications, there will always be players who harbor a sense of luck:

I will only put in a little money to play, and when I make a profit, I will stop, and I can safely withdraw.

This idea is beautiful, but in actual operation, the vast majority of people cannot stop.

Even if they start with a small amount of money, once they achieve high returns, they will not think about stopping, nor will they think about withdrawing safely. At this point, people's greed will swell, and they will only think about using more money to seek greater returns, and all the precautions set in their minds beforehand will be gradually lifted.

Therefore, once something goes wrong, the losses for users will definitely be substantial.

In this incident, the amounts lost by users who participated in advocating for their rights and exposing their losses online are not small.

Many users also mentioned that they reported to the police and filed cases.

In our country, transactions related to crypto assets are very sensitive issues and are legally a gray area. In this situation, how the police will handle such cases is hard to say, and even if they do handle it, it may lead to other troublesome matters.

Thus, for retail investors like us, when engaging in various activities in this field, the only ones who can truly protect our interests are ourselves.

We must place a high emphasis on the security of crypto assets, rather than entrusting security to others.

Moreover, wasn't the original intention of blockchain technology to hope that each user could control their private keys and firmly grasp their own assets?

I believe similar incidents will continue to occur in the future, and each time such an incident happens, users will suffer losses. If new users entering this field are unfortunate due to a lack of experience, it is somewhat understandable; however, if seasoned users who have been navigating this field for years also fall victim, they need to deeply reflect on themselves.

I always believe that in the crypto ecosystem, security is always the top priority. Any enticing benefits are merely illusions if security cannot be guaranteed.