The Aave founder offered to refund the user the $600,000 in fees collected from the transaction, and acknowledged "there are additional guardrails the industry can build to better protect users".
Trader loses almost $50 million in Aave swap gone wrong
A trader using the Aave interface attempted to swap $50 million USDT for AAVE. However, due to the enormous size of the order, the purchase had dramatic impact on the aave price. The Aave interface warned the customer about the price impact, and the trader clicked a checkbox to accept the order terms. Ultimately, they received only 324 AAVE (~$37,600) in return for their $50 million, losing 99.9% of their assets in the process.
$26.9 million erroneously liquidated on Aave after Chaos Labs oracle bug
Users of the Aave defi lending protocol who had borrowed from the wstETH/stETH pool suffered erroneous liquidations when a price oracle from Chaos Labs reported an inaccurately low price ratio between the two assets. The oracle bug caused some loans to report that they were below the required "health factor" (the ratio between the assets loaned and the amount of collateral provided by the borrower), triggering forcible liquidations across the platform amounting to $26.9 million.
Chaos Labs, presumably embarrassed to have lived up to its name, promised to reimburse users whose positions were improperly liquidated.
Thief pilfers NFTs priced at $230,000 from Gondi
A thief exploited a smart contract belonging to the Gondi NFT platform to steal 78 NFTs priced at $230,000. Perhaps the most shocking part of the theft is that the attacker managed to find NFTs still holding any value at all. Around half of the stolen NFTs were taken from a single wallet.
According to Gondi, the exploiter took advantage of functionality that allowed users to sell their NFTs to automatically repay loans.
Gondi has said it has reimbursed customers by buying them "comparable items" from the same collections as their stolen NFTs, although it seems questionable that this will satisfy customers who purchased products whose whole selling point is that they aren't interchangeable.
Solv Protocol exploited for $2.7 million
The Solv Protocol bitcoin defi lending and staking platform disclosed an exploit that they said affected fewer than ten users, but nevertheless netted the attacker 38 SolvBTC (a wrapped bitcoin token priced at $2.7 million). Although Solv has not disclosed specifics of the attack, some researchers have suggested it was a bug in the protocol's burn and mint functionality.
Crypto stolen from Korean authorities after they post wallet seed phrase
When Korean authorities posted a photograph of seized cash and other items from a police raid, they included photos of cards containing crypto wallet seed phrases, which were proudly arranged on the table next to Ledger hardware wallets for the photo op. Because it only takes a seed phrase to gain control of a crypto wallet, someone who saw the press release quickly acted to move around 4 million PRTG tokens from the wallet. The tokens are notionally worth $4.9 million, although the token is not highly liquid.
The blunder was likely due to the authorities' lack of knowledge about cryptocurrency. The move was somewhat akin to authorities publicly posting a username and password for a criminal's bank account — though that would likely be an easier mistake to unwind.
- "$4.8M in crypto stolen after Korean tax agency exposes wallet seed", Bleeping Computer [archive]
Step Finance, SolanaFloor, and Remora Markets shut down after January hack
Step Finance announced that, following a $30 million theft in late January, the project would be shutting down. Along with it, they will shut down SolanaFloor — a Solana-focused media project — and Remora Markets — a Solana-based tokenized stocks platform.
According to Step Finance, "we explored every possible path forward, including financing and acquisition opportunities. Unfortunately, we were unable to secure a viable outcome and have made the difficult decision to end all operations effective immediately."
In reply to Step Finance's announcement, crypto investor Mike Dudas claimed that the project had contacted him about bridge financing, but that Step had never responded to his request for more information about the hack. "i responded: 'would need to see the security post mortem before i could consider investing here' <crickets>"
YieldBlox lending pool drained of $10.2 million
A lending pool operated by YieldBlox on the Stellar blockchain was emptied of around $10.2 million in an oracle manipulation attack on the Reflector oracle supplying prices for the USTRY/USDC market. Reflector has said that there was no flaw with their oracle, and that market illiquidity caused the problem. "Reflector quoted correct prices. ... but it's impossible to quote adequate prices for a market fully handled by a single market-maker with almost zero trading activity."
The attacker was able to manipulate the oracle price to show that USTRY was priced at $100 (rather than its actual trading price of around $1.05). Then, they borrowed against the overvalued asset, withdrawing XLM and USDC priced at $10.2 million. However, around 48 million of the stolen XLM (~$7.2 million) were frozen.
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.
Goliath Ventures CEO charged with running $328 million Ponzi scheme
Federal authorities arrested Christopher Alexander Delgado, the CEO of Goliath Ventures (previously Gen-Z Ventures). According to the charging documents, what Delgado presented to prospective investors as a way to earn returns via crypto liquidity pools was actually a Ponzi scheme, where investors' money was just being used to pay off earlier investors. With the profits from his venture, Delgado allegedly threw lavish parties and purchased multiple multi-million dollar properties.
- Goliath Ventures - United States v. Christopher Alexander Delgado, US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida
South Korean prosecutors lose $22 million of seized crypto to the wallet inspector, later recover it
Staff members working for South Korean prosecutors, for some reason, decided to use a "wallet checking tool" during an August 2025 audit of seized crypto assets. The tool they selected turned out to be a phishing tool, and five wallets were drained of 320 BTC.
On February 19, the office announced they had recovered the stolen assets and identified the thief.