Balancer Faces Suspected $70 Million DeFi Exploit Involving Staked Ether
Balancer confirms one of the year’s largest DeFi breaches, with high-value assets drained from V2 Composable Stable Pools as markets reel from broad selloffs.
Balancer has confirmed an exploit affecting its V2 Composable Stable Pools, resulting in approximately $116 million in losses. The attack, which occurred around 7:48 AM UTC, drained 6,587 WETH ($24.5M), 6,851 osETH ($26.9M), and 4,260 wstETH ($19.3M) from multiple vaults. Pools outside the pause window were left vulnerable, while others were halted and remain in recovery mode. V3 and other pools were not affected. On-chain evidence shows the hacker is converting stolen assets into ETH, raising concerns of rapid fund consolidation and movement. The incident coincides with a sharp crypto market pullback—Ethereum fell below $3,500, Bitcoin under $105,000—with altcoins bleeding heavily. BAL has dropped to about $0.80, breaking long-term supports amid capitulation selling.
- DeFi: Short for decentralized finance, a blockchain-based financial system that operates without traditional intermediaries such as banks.
- Composable Stable Pools: A Balancer V2 feature allowing stable asset pools to be combined for optimized liquidity usage and flexible trading strategies.
- Wrapped Ether (WETH): A tokenized version of Ether (ETH) that conforms to the ERC-20 standard, enabling its use in decentralized applications and smart contracts.