Balancer Exploit Swells To $116m In Outflows As Team Offers 20% Bounty

DeFi protocol Balancer is the target of an ongoing exploit, with more than $116 million in staked Ether tokens transferred to a new wallet.

Update Nov. 3, 10:42 am UTC: This article has been updated to include a section on Berachain’s emergency hard fork.

Update Nov. 3, 9:47 am UTC: This article has been updated to add the latest figures, Balancer’s white hat bounty offer and comments from Nicolai Sondergaard, research analyst at Nansen.

Update Nov. 3, 9:21 am UTC: This article has been updated to include a section on the Balancer flash loan attack from 2020.

The decentralized exchange (DEX) and automated market maker (AMM) Balancer has been exploited, with more than $116 million worth of digital assets transferred to a newly created wallet.

“We’re aware of a potential exploit impacting Balancer v2 pools. Our engineering and security teams are investigating with high priority,” the Balancer team said in a Monday X post, adding that it will share more updates as information becomes available.

Onchain data initially showed that the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol was exploited for $70.9 million worth of liquid staked Ether (ETH) tokens transferred to a fresh wallet across three transactions, according to Etherscan logs.

The transfers included 6,850 StakeWise Staked ETH (OSETH), 6,590 Wrapped Ether (WETH) and 4,260 Lido wstETH (wSTETH), crypto intelligence platform Nansen said in a Monday X post.

By 8:52 am UTC on Monday, the ongoing exploit has swelled to over $116.6 million in stolen funds, according to blockchain data platform Lookonchain.

The Balancer exploit may stem from smart contract issues that had a “faulty access check allowing the attacker to send a command to withdraw funds,” Nicolai Sondergaard, research analyst at Nansen, told Cointelegraph, adding:

Source: CoinTelegraph