What is Infinite Mint Attack?
Let's find out Infinite Mint Attack meaning, definition in crypto, what is Infinite Mint Attack, and all other detailed facts.
An infinite mint attack happens when a malicious entity or hacker mints an excessive number of tokens within a protocol, inflating the supply to an unhealthy level and cheapening the value of each token. After that, the attacker usually drops minted tokens on the market which causes price crashes. This type of attack usually happens quickly and results in the attacker walking away with millions of dollars in tokens.
Blockchain systems are vulnerable to infinite mint attacks due to the security issues that allow hackers to take advantage of bugs and other code flaws. A chain of smart contract audits from diverse firms is the strongest defense against infinite mint attacks. Though audits do not guarantee that the protocol is totally safe.
To give you an example, in the Cover Protocol’s attack, hackers exploited a bug in the mining contract to create an infinite number of COVER tokens and drain almost $4.4 million from the project. The hacker was able to take advantage of 40 quintillion tokens on the Cover staking pool, leading the token price to collapse by 97%.