Cryptocurrency Theft Incident Occurred

The Unleash Protocol, a decentralized intellectual property platform, has lost approximately $3. 9 million worth of cryptocurrency due to a multisig hijack.

The attacker executed an unauthorized contract upgrade, allowing them to make asset withdrawals from the platform.

The attacker gained enough signing power to act as an administrator of Unleash’s multisig governance system.

An externally owned address obtained administrative control via Unleash’s multisig governance, enabling the unauthorized contract upgrade.

The unauthorized upgrade enabled asset withdrawals that were not approved by the Unleash team and occurred outside their intended governance and operational procedures.

The stolen assets include WIP (wrapped IP), USDC, WETH (wrapped Ether), stIP (staked IP), and vIP (voting-escrowed IP).

The Unleash Protocol is an operating system for managing intellectual property (IP) by converting it into on-chain assets (tokens) that can be used as collateral within the DeFi ecosystem.

The platform provides a monetization layer through smart contracts, automatically distributing licensing and royalty revenue to predefined stakeholders according to on-chain rules.

The stolen assets were bridged via third-party infrastructure and transferred