MyEtherWallet On the Way to Recover From Major Crises

Midst the first quarter of 2018, Taylor Monahan, co-founder of MyEtherWallet, announced she is leaving the company to launch a new and improved cryptocurrency wallet platform, called MyCrypto.

According to the press release and media interviews, this decision came as a mutual agreement between her and Kosala Hemachandra, the other co-founder.

This announcement led to the first significant challenge - alongside with Taylor, eighteen other staff members left the company and joined her in the new venture. While working on recruiting a new team, Kosala had to deal with a social media crisis, as MyEtherWallet’s Twitter account’s name suddenly got changed to MyCrypto. The news led to the migration of a significant amount of MyEtherWallet users to the new platform.

Kosala succeeded to hold the fort with the recruitment of a new team and a significant time investment in the development and launch of new and exciting wallet features and products.

Just a few months later, the product of the company was compromised by a strong DNS hijack attack, which exploited the Border Gateway Protocol routers to steal $152,000 in Ether (215 token units). The attack redirected all myetherwallet.com visitors to a phishing site, which stole their private keys and remained unnoticed for 2 hours.

Following the attack, one of the company’s former team members, Michael “blurpesec” Hahn, published advice for all users who might be victims of the hijacking attack.

Despite the number of critical situations, the company has focused all of its efforts to restore users' trust by improving the security features of the wallet.

One of the first resources to help users was an informational presentation that clarified the difference between a bank account and a cryptocurrency wallet, as well as phishing and scam protection. Users also received tips for keeping their private keys as a secret to keep their digital assets.

The company proactive tactics also included strong user recommendations to use a hardware wallet to Ethereum and other altcoins storage.