Ekubo exploited for $1.4 million

The Ekubo automated market maker infrastructure project experienced a $1.4 million theft after attackers were able to take advantage of a smart contract that improperly verified permissions. They stole 17 wBTC ($1.4 million), which they swapped for ETH and laundered via Tornado Cash.

Wasabi Protocol exploited for more than $5 million

The Wasabi Protocol defi derivatives platform has been exploited for more than $5 million across multiple blockchains. The attack has been attributed by blockchain security firms to a compromised admin key, which allowed the attacker to upgrade contracts to steal assets.

Aave faces approximately $200 million in bad debt after Kelp DAO bridge exploit

The Aave defi lending protocol is grappling with anywhere from $177 million to $236 million in bad debt after the Kelp DAO bridge exploiter used Aave to cash out their stolen rsETH. Rather than selling the tokens, the attacker used the rsETH as collateral to borrow wETH, leaving Aave stuck with the huge quantity of unbacked rsETH. Although Kelp and Aave both froze affected markets, the attacker had already cashed out. The attacker borrowed essentially all of the wETH available on the platform, leaving those who'd loaned those tokens unable to withdraw.

Aave maintains a $50 million insurance fund to absorb bad debt. However, this can't cover such a huge shortfall.

RaveDAO accused of pump-and-dump as token crashes 98%

Binance and BitGet have confirmed they are investigating allegations that RaveDAO orchestrate a pump-and-dump to push its RAVE token price from around $0.25 to more than $27 over the past few weeks, before the token price plummeted back down to $0.66. Concerns were first raised by blockchain investigator zachbxt, who called on the exchanges to investigate. He later wrote, "While it's good the exchanges responded, I find it unlikely this activity wasn't spotted internally before I raised it publicly."

RaveDAO describes itself as a "community-driven global rave powerhouse", and sells NFT tickets to rave events.

RaveDAO has denied any responsibility for the recent price movements, but did not address allegations of enormous token concentration with the project's team or large transfers to exchanges around the time of the price jump.

Kelp DAO bridge hacked for $292 million

An attacker stole 116,500 rsETH (restaked ether) from a blockchain bridge run by Kelp DAO. Based on prices at the time of the theft, the stolen tokens would be worth around $292 million — however, the attacker is likely to face challenges selling a quantity of tokens that amounts to 18% of rsETH's circulating supply.

When tokens are bridged from one chain to another, the tokens on the original chain are locked in the bridge smart contract while the token is used on the other chain, preventing its owner from double-spending the asset. With 116,500 locked rsETH now stolen, those using the token on other blockchains are now holding possibly unbacked tokens.

The rush for holders to offload their dubiously backed tokens is likely to worsen contagion throughout defi protocols, where those platforms could be left holding the bag. Some platforms, including Aave, Lido Finance, and Ethena, have paused markets involving rsETH to try to protect themselves.

This hack has set the new record for the largest defi hack in 2026, following the $285 million Drift exploit on April 1.

Balancer Labs shuts down after $110 million hack

After a November 2025 exploit in which $110 million was drained from the Balancer defi protocol, the company behind the project has announced it will shut down. Besides the massive loss, the hack also caused users to flee the protocol, and Balancer's total value locked quickly plummeted from around $775 million to around $300 million. It has continued to decline since, now hovering around $150 million.

Balancer co-founder Fernando Martinelli has said he strongly considered shutting down the protocol entirely, but ultimately decided to continue the project as it generates a relatively small amount of revenue. Instead, the project will move to being operated by a DAO and operating company, which Martinelli hopes will allow them to dodge "real and ongoing legal exposure" and "the liability of past security incidents".

Although another Balancer co-founder has optimistically presented this as "the start of a better chapter" for Balancer, it remains to be seen whether a skeleton crew will be able to revive the project.

IoTeX bridge exploited for $2 million after private key compromise

IoTeX, a platform to connect IoT devices to blockchain networks, lost around $2 million after a private key compromise enabled an attacker to drain funds from the project's token safe. Initial loss estimates were as high as $8.8 million, although IoTeX CEO Raullen Chai stated that the actual loss was closer to $2 million.

Blockchain security researcher Specter has suggested there may be links between this attack and a $50 million theft from the Infini "stablecoin neobank" a year ago.

Moonwell lending protocol suffers $1.78 million loss after second oracle misconfiguration in four months

After an oracle misconfiguration, the Moonwell defi lending protocol accumulated $1.78 million in bad debt. When the protocol showed that cbETH was priced at just over a dollar, rather than its actual market price of around $2,200, bots and humans alike rushed to take advantage of the mispricing. The error cascaded into liquidations across the platform.

This is the second time Moonwell has suffered a loss thanks to an oracle misconfiguration. In November 2025, the platform was left with almost $3.7 million in bad debt after a different asset was mispriced.

Although the vulnerable pull requests were at least partially developed by an AI tool, the security auditor who initially attributed the vulnerability to Claude Opus 4.6 later softened his criticism, noting that even senior developers could have made the same mistake. He did, however, criticize the project for a lack of sufficiently rigorous testing that should have caught the issue.

CrossCurve users exploited for around $3 million

Hackers exploited a bug in smart contracts deployed by the defi protocol CrossCurve to steal an estimated $3 million across multiple blockchains. The thief was able to spoof cross-chain messages, causing the CrossCurve bridge to release assets not belonging to them.

CrossCurve took a conciliatory tone in on-chain messages sent to the thief, writing, "These tokens were wrongfully taken from users due to a smart contract exploit. We do not believe this was intentional on your part, and there is no indication of malicious intent." (Who among us hasn't accidentally stolen millions of dollars?) However, they warned, they planned to escalate to working with law enforcement and blockchain security firms to investigate and prosecute the theft if the funds were not returned within 72 hours.

Aperture Finance users lose at least $3.4 million

An attacker exploited a bug in an Aperture Finance smart contract to steal at least $3.4 million from users who had enabled "instant liquidity management" features. Aperture Finance is a defi platform that aims to allow users to trade by telling large language models their "intents".

Aperture has said they disabled portions of their web app impacted by the bug, and are working to try to trace and recover stolen funds.

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