According to CoinMeta, as revealed by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, the hackers behind the $6.4 billion attack on Binance (identified as a North Korean tradertraitor group) are utilizing the TRON protocol of Polkadot to circumvent the freezing of centralized stablecoins. The attackers first exchanged TRX for stablecoins. Since Tether and Circle had already assisted in freezing $2.8 billion of the involved funds, to avoid having the stablecoins directly frozen, the hackers deposited these stablecoins into a DEFI lending protocol to obtain “depository token certificates” that cannot be frozen by centralized institutions. They then transferred these certificates to a clean, uncorrupted new address, redeemed them back into stablecoins, and finally converted them through a cross-chain bridge into ETH to completely cash out. Chainalysis pointed out that this method of laundering through depository tokens has been previously used by North Korean hackers in several other theft cases, and the investigation team is keeping real-time monitoring of the related activities on the blockchain.