Ownly Hack

TOTAL LOST $19K
Low Reentrancy

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1888 By amount stolen
Protocol Type NFT Marketplace Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Hacker used smart contract vulnerability on OWN Platform Staking to drain all $OWN tokens

Details of the Exploit

Ownly is a NFT platform providing staking opportunity to users. The hacker was able to unstake unlimited times due to a staking contract vulnerability. He created a smart contract which repetitively staked and unstaked, so all remaining $OWN tokens were drained and swapped on SparkSwap and PancakeSwap for the total amount of 19,219 $BUSD.

Block Data Reference

0x81d3ec77438b4e99aa99ba25b1dbc3fea317fe3b0x81d3ec77438b4e99aa99ba25b1dbc3fea317fe3b

Drainer transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x2cbe47ed…ea072f

Affected contract address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x421f3041…9d7e92

Address of attacker:

https://bscscan.com/address/0xba310583…ebd38a

Address of attackers smart contract:

https://bscscan.com/address/0xa81ea095…620386

This is classified as a Reentrancy . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Ownly
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Reentrancy
Classification NFT
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type NFT Marketplace
Affected Token OWN
Official Website w.ink/
Protocol Twitter/X @Try_Wink
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

What the Attacker Needed to Succeed

Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.

Technical Knowledge Deep understanding of reentrancy and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Ownly's contract logic - root cause: nft
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single atomic block
Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Yes — skilled auditors routinely flag Reentrancy vulnerabilities in code review

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Ownly, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 2022).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Reentrancy are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Reentrancy attack class for patterns
  • Check that all state-changing functions follow the Checks-Effects-Interactions (CEI) pattern to prevent reentrancy and logic ordering bugs
  • Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Reentrancy examples →

Reentrancy

Sources & References

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