Balancer exploit and Stream contagion expose DeFi’s fragile core: Finance Redefined

Balancer and Stream Finance incidents totaling over $200 million shook DeFi as RedStone and major Ethereum protocols launched reform initiatives.

Balancer suffered one of the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) exploits on Monday, with more than $116 million in staked Ether and liquidity pool tokens drained from Balancer v2 contracts and several forks. 

The decentralized exchange (DEX) and automated market maker (AMM) investigated what appeared to be faulty access control in its smart contracts, which allowed the attackers to withdraw funds directly from liquidity pools. 

The exploit began with a $70 million loss, which ballooned to $116 million, primarily affecting liquid staking assets such as Lido’s wstETH and StakeWise’s osETH.

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