Share this article The DeFi protocol Paid Network has been exploited via a vulnerability that allowed an attacker to create millions of new tokens. Millions Dumped By Hacker On Mar. 5, an unknown hacker exploited Paid Network’s smart contract and created over 59.4 million PAID tokens worth $166 million at the attack time. “The attacker used a compromised private key to the original contract deployer to leverage the smart contract’s upgrade function. The attacker then proceeded to ‘upgrade’ to a new smart contract that had the ability to burn and re-mint tokens,” the team said. Soon, the hacker moved on to selling the illicitly-created 2,501,203 $PAID tokens on Uniswap for 2,040.4339 ETH (about $3 million at the time).