Balancer confirms exploit after previous warning of a vulnerability

Decentralized exchange Balancer confirmed an exploit over the weekend, about a week after the team disclosed a critical vulnerability affecting some of its V2 pools.

Despite mitigating some of the risks associated with the vulnerability and advising users to withdraw funds, Balancer indicated it was unable to pause the affected pools before the exploit occurred.

“Balancer is aware of an exploit related to the vulnerability below (as reported on Aug. 22),” the team said on Sunday. “Mitigation procedures have drastically reduced risks, but we are unable to pause affected pools.”

An estimated 4% of the platform’s total funds remained at risk during the initial warning on Aug 22, according to a post on the Balancer governance forum.

Detection of suspicious fund movements

As of now, the official financial impact of the exploit is unclear. However, Meir Dolev, founder and CTO of the analyst firm Cyvers, was the first to note that $900,000 in funds moved from Balancer pools, which may be attributed to the exploit.

An address believed to belong to the hacker received $979,000 in DAI stablecoin across three transactions.

The Balancer team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.