This week, the lending protocol UwU Lend suffered consecutive attacks by hackers with the same name, resulting in initial losses of nearly $19.3 million and a second loss of $3.7 million. Founder Michael Patryn (alias Sifu) has been controversial due to his past involvement in fraudulent activities, with Aave founder criticizing users to stay away from forks, immature protocols, and incompetent teams.
On the 10th of this week, UwU Lend incurred losses of about $19.3 million due to flash loan attacks and manipulation of sUSDe price oracles. The project team originally announced on the 12th that they had identified and resolved the vulnerability and promised to repay all bad debts as soon as possible.
Blockchain security company SlowMist monitored today that the UwU Lend protocol suffered losses again, involving an amount of $3.7 million, with MetaTrust Alert indicating that this was the work of the same attacker.
Note: UwU Lend is a lending protocol created by QuadrigaCX founder Michael Patryn (alias Sifu), a controversial figure in the community.
Aave founder: Stay away from forks, immature protocols, and incompetent teams.
In response to this, many voices of distrust towards UwU Lend have once again emerged in the community. Aave founder Stani Kulechov criticized, and netizen Rho Rider questioned whether this was a large-scale DeFi rugpull disguised as a series of hacker attacks and liquidations. Coincidentally, the protocol was one of those involving Michael Egorov, the founder of Curve, who was liquidated today, leading Rho Rider to suspect that Egorov might also be a target or collaborator.
Online detective ZachXBT responded with a meme: “Are the funds safe? No, in fact, the funds belong to Sifu.”
Founder Sifu is a criminal with a history of fraud. Michael Patryn (alias Sifu) is one of the founders of the Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, which filed for bankruptcy in 2019 and was followed by a series of scandals and legal issues, including the sudden death of another founder, Gerald Cotten, and the disappearance of $169 million in customer funds.
Later, Patryn’s association with QuadrigaCX and his past identity sparked widespread attention. Before joining QuadrigaCX, Michael helped operate an identity theft organization called Shadowcrew, where he pleaded guilty and served time in the United States.
In 2021, he reappeared as @0xSifu and served as the financial director of the DeFi protocol Wonderland. However, when his true identity was revealed by community members, it sparked controversy, leading to a trust crisis within the Wonderland team, and ultimately, he resigned from that position.