Term Finance loses $8.5 million to governance attack

Ethereum lending protocol Term Finance lost around $8.5 million when an attacker purchased the majority of the project's governance token — which was not widely held — and then voted themselves to be the controller of the project's vaults. Although the project has governance safeguard, including a timelock and veto procedure, neither went into effect for reasons the project has yet to explain.

The attacker withdrew around 2,843 ETH (~$6.9 millon) and $1.68 million in the USDC stablecoin, amounting to about 68% of assets on the platform.

Term Finance previously lost $1.65 million to an oracle misconfiguration error in April 2025, but recovered $1 million of the funds.