White hats are the good Samaritans in the hacking community — the ones who exploit loopholes or security systems in order to expose potential weaknesses that need bolstering. At the beginning of this month, the importance of these individuals to the crypto ecosystem was highlighted after a blockchain transfer company, Nomad, fell prey to what was the first decentralized hack in the industry. Close to $200 million was stolen after a single hacker was able to exploit a loophole in the company’s smart contracts. The exploit was easily replicable by other attackers, resulting in the platform being drained in under a day.
In order to both reward and incentivize some of the supposed white hat hackers that took part in the exploit, Metagame, an NFT company, created a literal white hat NFT for those who return 90 percent of their funds.
