Balancer, a well-known DeFi protocol, has recently suffered a massive, multi-chain exploit, causing extensive damage of more than
$128 million in stolen assets. This catastrophe came to life despite the protocol undergoing a multitude of audits, revealing a significant breach in smart contract security. The rounding error was discovered to be the root cause of the exploit, which the attackers exploited deftly within 30 minutes. This event raises concerns over DeFi's inherent risks and trust implications within the crypto community. However, not all was lost;
Balancer managed to recover $19.3 million hours after the onslaught and subsequently made plans to distribute $8 million of the retrieved funds. An additional $20 million was also reclaimed using a loophole by StakeWise. A series of investigations followed, with an emergency hard fork executed by Berachain to halt the network and restrain the exploit. Balancer V2 was identified as a primary site of the attack, as hackers targeted Berachain's network. The revealing of this crisis led to close scrutiny of conducted audits and discussions surrounding Balancer's security and compliance. The exploit turned out to be one of the largest DeFi exploits to date in 2025, casting a dark shadow on Balancer and significantly diminishing its total value locked. The protocol plans to reimburse losses and discuss recovery plans in the wake of this massive breach, with Gnosis Chain aiming to recover the exploit funds through a hard fork.
Balancer News Analytics from Thu, 13 Feb 2025 08:00:00 GMT to Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:03:43 GMT -
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