Ostium pauses trading after apparent $18 million vault exploit

Onchain perpetuals exchange Ostium paused trading on Wednesday after blockchain security firm Blockaid flagged that an attacker exploited its OLP vault on Arbitrum, draining roughly $18 million in USDC.

According to initial reports from Blockaid, the attacker "used a registered PriceUpKeep forwarder and future-dated authorized oracle reports to create artificial trade profit, triggering an ~$18 million USDC payout from the vault."

"We are aware of the issue with the OLP vault," Ostium said in a post on X. "We have paused all trading. The team is investigating."

Onchain data reviewed by The Block shows the attacker has already begun swapping portions of the stolen USDC into Ethereum (ETH) through the Kyber Network before distributing the ether across multiple wallets. 

The exploit comes just weeks after Ostium announced a partnership with Nasdaq to power equity perpetual products using the exchange's operator's market data. Ostium said at the time it had processed more than $50 billion in cumulative trading volume.

The exchange was founded by Harvard alumni Kaledora Kiernan-Linn and Marco Antonio Ribeiro. Ostium has received $27.8 million to date, including a $20 million Series A co-led by General Catalyst and Jump Crypto. The company is also backed by LocalGlobe, Susquehanna, and Alliance DAO.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.