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Topic

DeFi Exploits

Attacks on decentralized finance protocols that exploit smart-contract bugs or logic flaws to drain funds, often triggering halts or recovery efforts.

Current stories

buildOne report1 publisher

A one-wei deposit let an attacker withdraw 14,838 DAI from a Polygon Uniswap V4 vault

An attacker with one share unit withdrew about 14,838 DAI from a Polygon Uniswap V4 vault on October 9, Panda Security found. The zero-liquidity fallback paid out the whole balance, so every fallback needs the main path's proportional-payout check.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence72
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap0
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence65
investConfirmed9 publishers

Jury convicts Uranium Finance hacker with $31 million of the $53.3 million take already seized

Manhattan federal jurors convicted Jonathan Spalletta of computer fraud and money laundering over the $53.3 million Uranium Finance exploit of 2021. Where the roughly $31 million in crypto seized in February 2025 ends up now turns on restitution and forfeiture rulings still to come.

Perspective Coverage

10 publishers
Builder
Builder 30%
Operator
Operator 42%
Investor
Investor 28%

Reality

Evidence85
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+8
Incentives40
Confidence78
investConfirmed5 publishers

Drift's capped pledges would lift its DFX recovery rate to about 50 cents at most

Drift's DFX recovery token opened at about 0.0104 USDT per dollar lost in the $295.4 million April exploit, roughly one cent on the dollar. Paying every capped pledge in full would lift that to about 50 cents, and the other half depends on Velocity's revenue and on funds recovered from the attacker.

Perspective Coverage

5 publishers
Builder
Builder 19%
Operator
Operator 42%
Investor
Investor 39%

Reality

Evidence70
Adoption8
Hype gap+25
Incentives55
Confidence65
investConfirmed4 publishers

NEAR Intents recovers all $3.8 million lost to a bug in its deposit-and-withdrawal layer

NEAR Intents got back all $3.8 million drained through a bug between its Omni deposit-and-withdrawal layer and its contract, after encrypted talks. Whether that layer is safe now rests on the patch, since every user who lets the protocol choose a bridge depends on it.

Perspective Coverage

4 publishers
Builder
Builder 31%
Operator
Operator 45%
Investor
Investor 24%

Reality

Evidence74
Adoption55
Hype gap+15
Incentives60
Confidence72
investConfirmed5 publishers

Attacker drains $3.8 million from Near Intents via bug in Omni deposit and withdrawal layer

Near Intents halted its cross-chain swap service after a bug in its Omni deposit layer let an attacker take about $3.8 million. Crypto balances carry no deposit insurance, so affected users are relying on the operator's promise to repay them in full.

Perspective Coverage

5 publishers
Builder
Builder 23%
Operator
Operator 44%
Investor
Investor 33%

Reality

Evidence70
Adoption55
Hype gap+15
Incentives60
Confidence65
investOne report1 publisher

After a $23.75 million oracle-credential drain, Ostium rebuilds its trading stack around Gateway

Ostium is rebuilding its trading stack around Gateway, three months after an attacker holding legitimate oracle-signer credentials drained $23.75 million. The new system has to keep execution fast enough for institutional hedging and also show that stolen credentials can no longer push a false price through.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+35
Incentives65
Confidence45
investConfirmed3 publishers

Balancer trades its buyback for a burn-to-redeem claim payable in May 2027

A forum proposal would cancel the buyback BAL holders approved in April and let them burn tokens instead for a pro-rata share of a treasury estimated at least $9 million, with the first payout held until veBAL locks expire at the end of May 2027.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 20%
Operator
Operator 33%
Investor
Investor 47%

Reality

Evidence72
Adoption8
Hype gap+12
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence70
investOne report1 publisher

Cosmos Hub validators rewrite chain state to pull 1.23 million ATOM from Neutron's exploiter

Cosmos Hub validators moved 1,227,121 ATOM, about $2.1 million, from the Neutron exploiter's wallet at restart with no signature from its owner. Anyone treating a Hub balance as settled now relies on the validators as well as the key.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+5
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence50
securityOne report1 publisher

Neutron governance overrode Astroport and Drop multisigs in a $9.4 million theft

Astroport and Drop contracts lost about $9.4 million on September 22 after an attacker won a Neutron governance vote that reassigned their admins. GoPlus Security values the staked NTRN behind that vote at about $113,000, far below the assets it could hand over.

Publishers:en.cryptonomist.ch

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence45
buildOne report1 publisher

An 8,000x oracle print let one account borrow six times NSTR's entire market cap

Four security firms classified the $3.5 million Nostra Finance loss as oracle price manipulation. The remedies the write-up lists are listing-policy parameters: a borrow cap below free float, an isolation flag, a deviation bound.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence52
Adoption42
Hype gap+15
Incentives55
Confidence45
investOne report1 publisher

Symbiosis's attacker turned 2^62 fake syBTC into 4.39 real WBTC

Symbiosis halted BTC routing on September 11 after its BridgeV2 processed a bad message and generated more than 2^62 unbacked syBTC. The attacker realized about $336,000, roughly 1.5 times the average hack TRM counted this year.

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption18
Hype gap+22
Incentives55
Confidence38
investOne report1 publisher

Router Protocol burns 303m ROUTE on its way out after four years without a buyer

A cross-chain firm that never earned enough to fund itself is closing on September 30, and the 303m tokens it will destroy return no cash to holders or to the $4.1mn of 2021 venture money behind it.

Reality

Evidence38
Adoption8
Hype gap+12
Incentives72
Confidence45
investOne report1 publisher

Switchboard pulls price feeds from four Move chains after one key repriced IOTA at $10 million

The attacker needed no trading capital, only signing authority: at the posted price, less than half a token of nominal collateral backed a 4.94 million VUSD mint. Three of the four halted networks show no confirmed loss at all.

Reality

Evidence34
Adoption63
Hype gap+22
Incentives66
Confidence42