Key Points
- Balancer was exploited on November 3rd, resulting in the theft of over $116 million in assets.
- The platform’s governance token, BAL, experienced significant volatility following the event.
Balancer, a DeFi protocol providing permissionless technology for AMM development and a DEX product suite for LPs, was compromised on November 3rd.
Over $116 million in assets were reportedly stolen from the platform, causing intense volatility in Balancer’s governance token, BAL.
Details on the Exploit
SpotOnChain reported that the exploit led to the theft of over $116 million in assets within two hours.
The stolen assets spanned multiple chains such as Ethereum, Base, Optimism, Sonic, Polygon, and Berachain, predominantly in liquid staking tokens of ETH.
The top five stolen assets included over $29 million in WETH, over $26 million in OSETH, more than $20 million in WSTETH, over $10 million in SFRXETH, and over $8 million in RETH.
According to SpotOnChain, the hacker quickly converted the LSTs into ETH in real-time.
Interestingly, a dormant whale reappeared after three years and withdrew $7.38 million in assets from the platform, making two transfers from Balancer’s vault 0xBA1: $5.19 million in GNO and $1.29 million in WETH.
Three years ago, this same whale moved over $12,620 in BAL from Balancer.
Users of Balancer are now being advised to secure their funds.
BNB Chain Projects Unaffected
The team at BNB Chain stated that no BNB Chain projects were affected by this exploit.
They have advised forked projects to remain cautious and consider pausing operations as a precautionary measure.
The BNB Chain team and partners are closely monitoring the situation.
Balancer’s Response
At 11:50 AM on November 3, Balancer’s team released an official statement regarding the exploit.
They reported a potential exploit impacting Balancer v2 pools and stated that the project’s engineers and security teams were investigating the issue.
Further updates are expected to be released.
BAL’s Market Reaction
BAL experienced intense volatility on November 3rd, fluctuating between $1.01 and $0.95.
Following the exploit, the BAL price fell to $0.89 before rebounding.
At the time of writing, BAL is trading above $0.96 with a market cap of over $65 million, down by more than 2% in the past 24 hours.
