Balancer Moves $70 Million in Crypto Assets Amid Possible Security Incident
A coordinated attack drained multiple high-value assets from Balancer vaults, prompting emergency pool halts as the hacker swaps stolen tokens to ETH amid a broad crypto market selloff.
Balancer has confirmed a major exploit affecting its V2 Composable Stable Pools, with approximately $116 million stolen, including 6,587 WETH (~$24.5M), 6,851 osETH (~$26.9M), and 4,260 wstETH (~$19.3M). The breach, occurring around 7:48 AM UTC, exploited pools outside the pause window, leaving them vulnerable. Balancer has halted pausable pools and initiated recovery efforts, stating that V3 and other pools remain unaffected. The attacker is actively converting stolen assets into ETH, raising fears of irreversible fund movement. The incident coincides with a sharp crypto market selloff, with Ethereum falling below $3,500 and Bitcoin under $105,000, compounding pressure on BAL, which has dropped to $0.80 and remains in a long-term downtrend.
- WETH: Wrapped Ether, a token representing Ether in the ERC-20 standard to enable compatibility with decentralized applications.
- osETH: A liquid staking derivative of Ether, representing staked assets while maintaining liquidity for use in DeFi protocols.
- wstETH: Wrapped Staked Ether, a wrapped version of stETH that maintains a fixed balance and is used in DeFi protocols.