It started like a normal Monday on-chain.
Then $116 million vanished.
Balancer just suffered its biggest exploit in history
🧵👇
1/ At first, it looked small.
A few suspicious transfers.
Some staked ETH leaving Balancer V2 pools on Ethereum.
6,587 WETH.
6,851 osETH.
4,260 wstETH.
Gone.
2/ But within hours, it spread.
Arbitrum.
Base.
Sonic.
Even forks on Polygon and Optimism.
By nightfall, more than $116 million was gone.
And the wallets were still moving.
3/ The first hit came from a single transaction:
0xd155207261712c35fa3d472ed1e51bfcd816e616dd4f517fa5959836f5b48569
It drained nearly $70 million in one go.
A textbook precision strike, not a random exploit.
4/ Soon after, on-chain monitors lit up.
@peckshield. @nansen_ai. @lookonchain.
They all saw the pattern:
Custom ERC-20s, flash loans, fresh contracts.
27 forks potentially exposed.
Balancer V3 untouched for now.
5/ No statement from Balancer yet.
No post-mortem.
Just silence.
Meanwhile, the exploiter’s wallets
0xaa76…, 0x8727…, 0x0453…
kept moving funds across bridges.
6/ This isn’t the first time Balancer’s been hit.
2020: $500K drained from pool logic.
2023: a frontend hack fooled users.
2025: the biggest one yet (230Ă— larger)
Same name. Same problem.
Different year.
7/ The root cause?
Still under the microscope.
Early traces point to V2 pool logic
flash loan manipulation or mispriced swaps.
If confirmed, it’s another reminder:
DeFi composability cuts both ways.
8/ Across X, panic spread.
“Revoke approvals.”
“Don’t touch affected pools.”
“Everything is still live.”
The advice is simple:
Use tools like Revoke cash, stay flat, and wait for a verified fix.
9/ By the numbers:
> $116M+ drained
> 27 forks affected
> $BAL down 10%
> $3B+ in DeFi hacks this year alone
It’s not just an exploit.
It’s a pattern and it’s getting worse.
10/ In a year filled with ETF rallies and AI hype,
this attack was a brutal reminder:
Code doesn’t care about bull runs.
Smart contracts don’t forget mistakes.
11/ The Balancer exploit isn’t over yet.
Funds are still moving.
Audits are pending.
And DeFi’s trust is cracking, block by block.
Because decentralization doesn’t mean invincibility.
It just means..you’re on your own.
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