By: Geeq  on Dec 13, 2021

AscendEX Update: Over the weekend AscendEX.com was compromised, with approximately $78 million in tokens stolen. AscendEX identified a number of unauthorized transfers from one of its hot wallets and immediately initiated a security response. Over 80 assets are affected by this hack, and unfortunately that includes $400k of GEEQ.

AscendEX is investigating the hack and has confirmed the following:

• Only GEEQ tokens in the hot wallet was affected by the attack
• The wallet has been flagged on Etherscan
• All centralised exchanges have been made aware and will block the wallet

In addition, Ascendex has confirmed:

• GEEQ tokens in the staking contract are not affected, as these are held in cold storage off the exchange
• Withdrawals from the tokens staked in the cold wallets is not advised, in fact, withdrawals from AscendEX have been halted until further notice
• AscendEX will update the public. Please follow @AscendEX_Global
• Any losses incurred by AscendEX users will be covered completely by AscendEX

Since the attack on AscendEX, we have been carefully monitoring the hacker’s wallet, along with every project that was affected.

We have spoken with our devs to confirm there is no function to freeze or blacklist in the GEEQ ERC20 code.

Although the wallet has been blacklisted on Etherscan and cannot use centralized exchanges, it is still possible for Uniswap or another DEX to be used to sell the stolen $GEEQ.

As of last night the attacker started to move tokens stolen from the attack to different wallets.

You can see, the $GEEQ tokens have been moved from this wallet to this address.

We want to keep the community informed and for you to be aware of the possibility that the attacker will use Uniswap to liquidate their tokens.

If you wish to remove your liquidity from Uniswap, please follow these instructions:

• Go to uniswap
• To remove liquidity from a pool on Uniswap, first, click on “pool”
• Select the pair you provided liquidity to – in this case the GEEQ/ETH pool – and remove. You will receive both GEEQ & ETH back, plus any fees you have earned while providing liquidity. These may be different to the amounts you put in, due to impermanent loss, so you may have more ETH than GEEQ or vice versa; this is normal for liquidity provision

You will still be able to trade $GEEQ on other exchanges, which can be found here.

How does this affect Geeq web-staking?

While AscendEX investigates, it has halted withdrawals on ERC20 and other affected tokens. They have said they will keep withdrawals closed for as long as needed, which affects our previously laid plans.

Geeq’s new web staking opens today, with only a seven-day contribution period. Because of the halt in withdrawals from AscendEX over the weekend and the uncertainty about when it will be safe to resume, our community’s ability to withdraw from AscendEX and then stake in our pools within that time frame has been affected.

We cannot change the seven-day contribution window, as this was hard coded into the staking contracts. These contracts were deployed on Friday before the hack.

After much deliberation we have decided not to open a new liquidity pool. Instead, we will open a new staking pool later in the week. We will arrange for a larger pool size and longer contribution period.

We believe this is the best workaround to ensure that Geeq supporters who are affected by the AscendEX hack do not miss out on the opportunity to stake.

Thank you all for your support, and we look forward to putting this unfortunate incident behind us.

– The Geeq Team