Gnosis Pay Security Breach Triggers Emergency Asset Withdrawal

Another DeFi exploit surfaced again on Monday, 1st June, targeting the Zodiac delay module of gnosis pay. The actual amount of drain or funds loss is not yet disclosed, but Gnosis co-founder and CEO Martin Koppelmann said that Gnosis will fully reimburse affected individuals. Following the security breach, the native ecosystem token for Gnosis Pay— Gnosis (GNO)— is down roughly 7% to currently trade at $107.25. 

Gnosis Pay Exploited as Attackers Bypass Smart Contract Security

Gnosis Pay, the decentralised payment network built directly on the Gnosis Chain, suffered a critical security breach on Monday. Attackers exploited a vulnerability in its “Delay Module” smart contract, leading to an emergency notice for all users to protect their assets. 

Martin Köppelmann issued an urgent warning to users, including a call to pull out all their remaining balance, including EURe and GNO tokens. Blockchain security firm PeckShield also verified the ongoing exploit and echoed the urgency for users to assess their immediate wallet exposure. 

However, in a follow-up tweet, Köppelmann stated that “Most users will not be able to do so, but we are actively working to contain the damage.” That said, he also assured the affected users that “We believe we can contain the majority of it, and in any case, we will ensure that all users are made whole.”

The technical exploit directly compromises Gnosis Pay’s internal architecture, specifically targeting the Delay Module. This module is designed to support the concept of self-custody, in addition to traditional retail spending, and enforces a three-minute time delay for non-card transactions to avoid double-spending as the funds travel through the Visa payment network. Attackers bypassed this module’s core mechanism to drain funds. 

This incident follows a very stormy week for the Gnosis Safe ecosystem. A separate vulnerability in an external malicious “SquidRouterModule” siphoned approximately $3.2 million from 86 Gnosis Safe wallets on both Ethereum and Base networks just six days ago. 

The previous hack was based on third-party code, while this current attack is directly on the native functionality of Gnosis Pay. The team is diligently trying to confine the bug.

Following the exploit, GNO witnessed significant volatility as its price initially spiked to $132.1, before reverting back to its current trading value of $107.4, registering an intraday loss of 7%. Consequently, the asset’s market capitalization has dropped to $287.4 million, and aggressive selling has pushed its 24-hour trading volume 1043% up to $18.8M.

Gnosis Price Volatility is Confined Within this Triangle

Since last month, the Gnosis GNO-5.92% coin has experienced heavy fluctuations in its price, with the asset temporarily spiking to $197.43 high in early May, and now plunged to the $107 region. A deeper analysis of the daily chart shows this pullback as part of a broader consolidation trend led by a symmetrical triangle pattern.

This pattern’s setup follows two converging trendlines to over dynamic resistance and support to traders until the price builds sufficient momentum to offer a decisive breakout. With the current bearish momentum, the GNO price is poised to drop another roughly 12% and retest the triangle support at $96.59.

Holistically, the support has bolstered buyers with a strong cushion to rebound price for higher recovery. If true, the coin price could bounce back to the next significant resistance levels at $113, $137, and $160.

However, the slight decline in the 100-and 200-day exponential moving average slope indicates a broader sideways to bearish sentiment among market participants. Therefore, the Gnosis coin price also holds a risk of a bearish breakdown, which could extend its correction to $92, followed by $76.