Millions of Curve DAO tokens stolen minutes before a white hat rescue mission
Quick Take
- Millions of CRV tokens were taken minutes before a white hat mission to protect the funds was set to take place.
- This is part of a series of exploits taking place today.
Millions of curve DAO (CRV) tokens were stolen minutes before a white hat rescue mission to safeguard the funds, according to blockchain data and Curve contributor Banteg.
"crv/eth pool drained minutes before a whitehack operation," said Banteg on Twitter.
Current estimates suggest 7 million of CRV and $14 million of wrapped ether (WETH) were taken in the exploit. The tokens were stolen from the CRV/ETH pool on Curve Finance.
Security analyst BlockSec claims the wallet used for the attack was funded from crypto exchange Binance.
Curve Finance is a decentralized exchange (DEX) optimized for efficient stablecoin trading. It offers multiple pools for trading tokens against primarily stablecoins but also other tokens.
Curve is currently suffering from a vulnerability that affects multiple pools, due to a bug in previous versions of the Vyper programming language. Prior to this exploit, $26 million of tokens were transferred from multiple Curve factory pools. This impacted projects including JPEGd, Metronome and Alchemix. So far, overall asset outflows related to this security incident on Curve pools have crossed $41 million, according to BlockSec.
A statement in the Curve Discord said that all affected pools have now been exploited or saved by a white hat hacker and all remaining pools are safe.
Falling price of CRV
The price of CRV has fallen twice today. It dropped from $0.73 to $0.70 upon the earlier movements of funds and then fell again to $0.64 after the latest theft.
A wallet linked to Michael Egorov, the founder of Curve Finance, has a large loan position on DeFi lending platform Aave that is backed by a large amount of CRV tokens. About $60 million is being borrowed in stablecoins backed by $180 million in CRV, according to on-chain data. This position could be at risk of being liquidated if the price of CRV falls further to around the $0.40 mark.
The owner of the wallet has made some moves today reducing the risk of liquidation and has previously adjusted the loan and its collateral when it has been in danger of liquidation.
The article has been updated with further information of the exploit and details of the loan position.
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