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Beanstalk Hacker Steals $76M in Flash Loan Exploit

Beanstalk was exploited Sunday. The hacker made off with about $76 million, but the protocol losses are thought to be much higher.

Beanstalk Hacker Steals $76M in Flash Loan Exploit
Shutterstock cover by jaap posthumus

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Beanstalk joins a growing list of Ethereum DeFi protocols to suffer a multi-million dollar exploit. 

Beanstalk Hacked for $76M

Beanstalk, a credit-based stablecoin protocol built on Ethereum, is the latest DeFi project to suffer a major exploit. 

An attacker used a flash loan exploit to drain the protocol’s funds early Sunday. Etherscan data shows that they leveraged Aave’s flash loan feature to withdraw liquidity from the protocol and then used Uniswap to trade DAI, USDC, and USDT for Ethereum. They got away with 24,830 Ethereum worth around $76 million at current prices, but the protocol’s losses are estimated to be much higher. They’ve already started siphoning the funds through the Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash to obfuscate their transaction history. 

The blockchain security firm PeckShield first posted details of the attack on Twitter shortly after it occured. Beanstalk, meanwhile, has not yet posted an official statement. Crypto Briefing reached out to both Beanstalk and PeckShield but had not received a response at press time. 

BEAN, the protocol’s stablecoin designed to track the price of the U.S. dollar, collapsed following the incident. It’s currently trading at just $0.26. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies. 

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