The Incident of Pundi AI Being Delisted by a Korean Exchange After a Hacker Attack

Recently, Pundi AI tokens were delisted from several exchanges in South Korea, attracting widespread attention in the industry. The incident was triggered by a hacker attack during the token migration process, resulting in the abnormal issuance of 1 million tokens. In response to this crisis, the team implemented a series of measures, but ultimately, they were unable to avoid the fate of being delisted.

Event Review

On the afternoon of July 12, the Pundi AI system detected abnormal minting activities, resulting in the minting of approximately 1 million PUNDI tokens. After an emergency investigation, the team confirmed that this was a well-planned Hacker attack. The attacker exploited a vulnerability in the token migration contract to gain administrative access to the contract when deploying the new contract in February.

To maximize asset recovery, the team decided not to publicly disclose details for the time being, but instead to quietly track and freeze assets. This strategy has yielded significant results, successfully intercepting approximately 95% of the stolen assets. However, due to delays in response from third-party service providers over the weekend, some losses still occurred on the BSC chain.

In the end, among the approximately 6 million dollars worth of issued tokens, the team recovered about 87% of the assets. For users who were affected by the price crash, the team conducted repurchases at fair prices to ensure zero losses for users. The team itself bore nearly 2 million dollars in losses.

delisting controversy

Despite the Pundi AI team's best efforts in event handling, they were still unable to avoid the fate of delisting by the Digital Asset Exchange Association of Korea (DAXA). The reason given by DAXA was "untimely information disclosure."

The team had multiple rounds of communication with DAXA, explaining the technical details, solutions, and user compensation situation in detail. However, DAXA ultimately decided to delist Pundi AI from the major exchange in South Korea without providing further justification or a chance for mitigation.

This decision has had a serious impact on Pundi AI. The project has been deeply rooted in the South Korean market for many years, accumulating a large user base. Approximately 80% of the trading volume and 70% of the tradable tokens are concentrated in centralized exchanges in South Korea. Delisting not only affects liquidity but, more importantly, may harm the project's reputation.

Future Planning

In the face of this setback, the Pundi AI team has developed three core plans:

1. Increase investment in decentralized exchanges to provide users with sufficient on-chain liquidity.
2. Vigorously promote the newly launched AI data product Data Pump.
3. Launch token buyback and airdrop programs to reward loyal users who support the project.

The team stated that although the delisting brought difficulties, it also "unlocked the seal," allowing the project to be more flexible in the application of token economics. They will continue to actively communicate with DAXA and major exchanges to strive for a return to the Korean market.

AI Data Product Layout

Pundi AI's new product Data Pump is described as "the Launchpad for AI datasets". Users can package various content data into NFTs, then stake them on the platform to generate tokens and trade them on decentralized exchanges. This product aims to realize the assetization and monetization of data.

Compared to other Web3 AI projects, Pundi AI places greater emphasis on high-quality data in specialized fields, such as medical imaging and autonomous driving. The team has also developed AI AMM (Automated Market Maker) to enable automated on-chain trading of data assets.

The Development Prospects of Web3 AI

Regarding the development of the Web3 AI field, the Pundi AI team believes that the current bottleneck lies in the lack of truly useful applications that can change lives. They point out that "decentralized computing power" is more like a pseudo-proposition at this stage, and the real value of blockchain in the AI field lies in privacy protection at the data level.

The team predicts that the Web3 AI sector will need to wait for traditional AI giants to actively embrace blockchain technology and provide users with data protection features in order to welcome a real boom. This trend is likely to be led by traditional giants rather than being driven from the bottom up by Web3 native projects.