When DeFi Goes Wrong: $30M Lost in Click, $8.4M Stolen in Code 😅

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Ah, the theater of decentralized finance! A tale of woe unfolds on Venus Protocol, where a mere mortal lost nearly $30 million in assets. And no, it was not the work of some shadowy hacker but rather… *dramatic pause* …a phishing scam. Oh, the humanity! 🎭

While whispers of a hack swirled like a tempest, blockchain sleuths at Cyvers stepped forth to confirm to BeInCrypto that this calamity was born of user error-a misstep so grand it could rival Molière’s finest comedies of folly. Alas, the protocol itself remains blameless. Or does it? 🤔

A Phishing Farce: $30 Million Vanishes in a Single Click

Enter PeckShield, the herald of doom, who first sounded the alarm. A Venus Protocol user fell prey to a phishing scam, losing approximately $27 million after granting malicious approval to an attacker’s address (0x7fd8…202a). Ah, the perils of trusting strangers on the internet! 🎣

#PeckShieldAlert A user of @VenusProtocol has been drained ~$27M in crypto after falling for a #phishing scam.
The victim approved a malicious transaction, granting token approval to the attacker’s address (0x7fd8…202a) for asset transfer.

– PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) September 2, 2025

And thus, the villain gained dominion over the hapless victim’s wallet, absconding with treasures vast and varied: $19.8 million in vUSDT, $7.15 million in vUSDC, $146,000 in vXRP, $22,000 in vETH, and even 285 BTCB. Truly, “generational wealth” evaporated in an instant. 💸

Defi sage Ignas chimed in, declaring Venus itself “worked as intended.” Indeed, the fault lay not in the stars-or the protocol-but in ourselves. The dark side of DeFi rears its ugly head once more: open approvals are powerful, yet perilous if wielded carelessly. As analyst Crypto Jargon quipped:

“One bad approval and boom-you’re done. That’s the dark side of DeFi: open approvals are powerful, but also deadly if you’re not careful.”

The community echoed warnings aplenty: revoke approvals regularly, shun suspicious links, and for heaven’s sake, use hardware wallets lest your riches vanish into thin air. Cyvers solemnly confirmed:

“Yes, user side error not at protocol level,” Cyvers articulated.

Meanwhile, the stolen funds linger in the attacker’s lair, untouched and unswapped. Hakan Unal of Cyvers lamented:

“This incident shows that even experienced DeFi users remain vulnerable to sophisticated phishing schemes. By tricking the victim into granting token approvals, the attacker was able to drain $27M from a Venus Protocol in a single transaction.”

Bunni DEX Exploit: A Comedy of Errors

But lo! In another corner of the DeFi stage, Bunni, a decentralized exchange built upon Uniswap v4, suffered a genuine exploit-a vulnerability in its very code. Over $8.4 million vanished across Ethereum and UniChain. Oh, the irony! One protocol suffers by human folly; the other by technical flaw. 🐛

Bunni swiftly paused all smart contract functions, declaring:

“The Bunni app has been affected by a security exploit. As a precaution, we have paused all smart contract functions on all networks.”

GoPlus Security revealed that the culprit lay within Bunni’s custom Liquidity Distribution Function (LDF). Blockchain developer Victor Tran explained how the attacker manipulated the curve with cunning precision:

1. Bunni is a liquidity hook that runs on top of UniswapV4. Instead of using UniswapV4’s normal system, Bunni has its own liquidity curve called LDF (Liquidity Distribution Function).

2. After each trade, Bunni checks if its LDF curve has changed since the last trade. If it has,…

– Victor Tran (@vutran54) September 2, 2025

Through repeated miscalculations during liquidity rebalancing, the exploiter siphoned tokens beyond measure, draining pools dry before sealing their scheme with two final swaps. Yet fear not, dear audience, for Uniswap v4 remains unscathed. 🙏

Thus, these twin tragedies illuminate the precarious dance between innovation and security in DeFi. On one hand, Venus reminds us of the frailty of human judgment-a single click can undo fortunes. On the other, Bunni reveals how novel mechanisms may harbor hidden flaws. Both serve as cautionary tales for our modern age. 🎭

As the curtain falls on this farcical drama, let us remember: in the world of decentralized finance, vigilance is paramount. For whether through human error or technical oversight, one misstep can bring ruin upon us all. And so, the show goes on… until the next debacle takes center stage. 👏

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2025-09-02 13:45