Balancer | Crypto

The proposal details how roughly $8 million recovered from the $116 million November hack would be distributed to victims. Two members of the Balancer protocol community submitted a proposal on Thursday outlining a distribution plan for a portion of the funds recovered from the protocol’s $116 million November exploit. About $28 million from the $116 million heist was recovered by white hat hackers, internal rescuers, and StakeWise — an Ether liquid staking platform.  However, the proposal covers only the $8 million recovered by white hat hackers and internal rescue teams, while the nearly $20 million retrieved by StakeWise will be distributed separately to its users. Read more

The DAO behind the exchange issued an onchain warning to those responsible for a major exploit: Return the funds for a bounty or face the consequences. The Balancer Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) issued an onchain notice to the wallet holder behind an exploit this week that resulted in more than $100 million in digital assets being stolen. In a Friday X post, Balancer posted a copy of the message it sent to the individual or group responsible for the incident tied to the platform’s V2 Composable Stable Pools. The decentralized exchange offered them until Saturday to return the funds in exchange for an unspecified bounty, or it would use “technical, onchain, and legal measures” to pursue matters. “We understand that affected users are awaiting further updates,” Balancer said of the exploit. “We will continue to provide information as the investigation progresses.” Read more

The DAO behind the exchange issued an onchain warning to those responsible for a major exploit: Return the funds for a bounty or face the consequences. The Balancer Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) issued an onchain notice to the wallet holder behind an exploit this week that resulted in more than $100 million in digital assets being stolen. In a Friday X post, Balancer posted a copy of the message it sent to the individual or group responsible for the incident tied to the platform’s V2 Composable Stable Pools. The decentralized exchange offered them until Saturday to return the funds in exchange for an unspecified bounty, or it would use “technical, onchain, and legal measures” to pursue matters. “We understand that affected users are awaiting further updates,” Balancer said of the exploit. “We will continue to provide information as the investigation progresses.” Read more

Balancer and Stream Finance incidents totaling over $200 million shook DeFi as RedStone and major Ethereum protocols launched reform initiatives. Balancer suffered one of the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) exploits on Monday, with more than $116 million in staked Ether and liquidity pool tokens drained from Balancer v2 contracts and several forks.  The decentralized exchange (DEX) and automated market maker (AMM) investigated what appeared to be faulty access control in its smart contracts, which allowed the attackers to withdraw funds directly from liquidity pools.  The exploit began with a $70 million loss, which ballooned to $116 million, primarily affecting liquid staking assets such as Lido’s wstETH and StakeWise’s osETH. Read more

Balancer and Stream Finance incidents totaling over $200 million shook DeFi as RedStone and major Ethereum protocols launched reform initiatives. Balancer suffered one of the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) exploits on Monday, with more than $116 million in staked Ether and liquidity pool tokens drained from Balancer v2 contracts and several forks.  The decentralized exchange (DEX) and automated market maker (AMM) investigated what appeared to be faulty access control in its smart contracts, which allowed the attackers to withdraw funds directly from liquidity pools.  The exploit began with a $70 million loss, which ballooned to $116 million, primarily affecting liquid staking assets such as Lido’s wstETH and StakeWise’s osETH. Read more

Balancer has offered a 20% bounty to white hats and the hacker if they return the stolen crypto. But as of now, the bounty remains unclaimed.

The hack was one of the “most sophisticated” attacks so far in 2025, according to Deddy Lavid, CEO of blockchain security company Cyvers. The team behind decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Balancer published a preliminary post-mortem report on Wednesday, detailing the cause of the exploit that siphoned $116 million across DeFi markets. Balancer was hit by a sophisticated code exploit on Monday that affected Balancer v2 Stable Pools and Composable Stable v5 pools, while all other pool types remained unaffected, according to the report. The hacker used a combination of BatchSwaps, which allow the user to bundle multiple actions in a single transaction, including flashloans — short-term loans borrowed and repaid within the same transaction — and an exploit of the upscale rounding function that affects EXACT_OUT swaps in the Stable Pools. Read more

The $116 million Balancer exploit appears to have been months in the making, with the attacker utilizing Tornado Cash and advanced methods to evade detection. The onchain transactions of the exploiter behind the $116 million Balancer hack point to a sophisticated actor and extensive preparation that may have taken months to orchestrate without leaving a trace, according to new onchain analysis. The decentralized exchange (DEX) and automated market maker (AMM) Balancer was exploited for around $116 million worth of digital assets on Monday. Blockchain data shows the attacker carefully funded their account using small 0.1 Ether (ETH) deposits from cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash to avoid detection. Conor Grogan, director at Coinbase, said the exploiter had at least 100 ETH stored in Tornado Cash smart contracts, indicating possible links to previous hacks. Read more

Reports showed four security companies conducted 11 audits of Balancer’s smart contracts starting in 2021, but a bad actor was still able to drain millions in staked Ether. Many cryptocurrency traders are seeking answers after a successful exploit at the decentralized exchange and automated market maker Balancer resulted in more than $100 million in digital assets being stolen. In a Monday X post updating users on the exploit, Balancer said the incident was “isolated to V2 Composable Stable Pools and does not impact Balancer V3 or other Balancer pools.” The platform added that it had “undergone extensive auditing by top firms, and had bug bounties running for a long time to incentivize independent auditors,” calling into question how the exploit was accomplished. Read more

For years, Balancer stood as one of DeFi’s most reliable institutions, a protocol that had survived several bear markets, audits, and integrations without scandal. However, that credibility collapsed on Nov. 3, when the blockchain security firm PeckShield reported that Balancer and several of its forks were under an active exploit spreading across multiple chains. Within […] The post How 11 audits couldn’t stop Balancer’s $128 million hack redefining DeFi risks appeared first on CryptoSlate.