Curve, a stablecoin exchange at the heart of decentralized finance (DeFi) on Ethereum, has been the victim of an exploit according to a tweet from the project.
Upwards of $100 million worth of cryptocurrency are at risk due to a “re-entrancy” bug in Vyper, a programming language used to power parts of the Curve system. Several stablecoin pools on the platform — used for pricing and liquidity on a number of different DeFi services — have been drained by hackers so far.
Other projects that use the Vyper programming language could share the same vulnerability.
It was unclear at press time how much had been drained from Curve as a result of the attack. BlockSec, a blockchain auditing firm, estimated the total losses above $42 million in a preliminary analysis posted to Twitter.
Curve operates 232 different pools, according to its website, but only pools using Vyper versions 0.2.15, 0.2.16 and 0.3.0 are at risk, said mimaklas, a member of the team in a Discord announcement.
Mimaklas also said that “all affected pools have been drained or white hacked, and the team is assessing the situation with affected teams.”
The heist destabilized trading markets for Curve DAO’s native CRV token, which was down 17% on the day at a price of $0.61 as of press time. That price action threatened to compound the chaos by potentially forcing a liquidation on the founder of Curve’s $70 million borrowing position on Aave.
UPDATE (July 30, 2023, 21:25 UTC): Adds additional information.