Balancer, the Ethereum automated market maker (AMM) and DeFi protocol, recently confirmed a devastating breach resulting in losses of nearly $900,000. The exploit came to light on August 27, following the protocol’s disclosure of a vulnerability affecting multiple pools.
The breach was made public via X (formerly Twitter), where the Balancer protocol officially acknowledged the incident. Just days prior, the platform had unveiled the existence of a vulnerability that posed a risk to various pools within the ecosystem.
Blockchain security expert Meier Dolev promptly revealed an Ethereum address purportedly linked to the attacker behind this exploit. In the aftermath of the breach, this address witnessed a series of transactions involving the Dai stablecoin. The attacker managed to accumulate a staggering sum, with two transfers of $636,812 and $257,527, respectively. This activity propelled the address’s overall balance beyond the $893,978 mark.
The Balancer protocol’s team issued a statement on X, addressing the situation at hand. They acknowledged the exploit’s connection to the previously identified vulnerability and detailed that their mitigation efforts had significantly lowered the associated risks. However, despite these efforts, the affected pools could not be temporarily halted.
The protocol’s team emphasized the necessity for users to take immediate action to protect their assets. In light of the exploit, they urged users to withdraw from the impacted liquidity pools (LPs) to safeguard their holdings from potential further breaches.
Critical Vulnerability Puts Balancer Boosted Pools at Risk
Balancer first disclosed a critical vulnerability that has impacted its boosted pools on August 22nd. The vulnerability prompted the protocol to take immediate action by urging users to withdraw funds from liquidity providers (LPs) and temporarily halting pools in order to mitigate potential damages.
The vulnerability has raised concerns for assets deployed across multiple networks, including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Gnosis, Fantom, and zkEVM. Balancer emphasized that this move was essential to safeguard user assets and prevent further risks.
Upon the initial discovery of the vulnerability, a mere 1.4% of Balancer’s total assets were found to be at risk. This represented a staggering sum of over $5 million in asset exposure. As of August 24th, the situation was still dire, with approximately $2.8 million, equivalent to 0.42% of the total value locked, remaining under threat.
