‘Critical vulnerability’ reported in Balancer v2 pools

The vulnerability has been mitigated in around 80% of the affected v2 pools

article-image

Tang Yan Song/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Liquidity protocol Balancer has discovered and disclosed a “critical vulnerability” affecting more than 100 of its v2 pools across eight blockchains.

Balancer said the issue has been mitigated in around 80% of the impacted pools. The remaining 20% of affected pools represent roughly 4% of Balancer’s total value locked (TVL).

The Balancer team posted a list of affected pools on its GitHub page and its emergency subDAO has been activated, enabling users to exit from affected pools. 

“We believe funds in the mitigated pools (labeled ‘mitigated’) are safe, but nevertheless strongly recommend timely migration to safe pools, or withdrawal,” Jeff Bennett, a software engineer at Balancer Labs, wrote in a post. 

Bennett urged all liquidity providers to exit their positions in affected pools immediately. 

“Pools that could not be mitigated are labeled ‘at risk.’ If you are [a liquidity provider] in any of these pools, please exit immediately,” he wrote.

The situation had an immediate market impact. The price of Balancer’s native token BAL dipped by over 4% on the news of the vulnerabilities. BAL’s price has since recovered, trading at $3.47 at the time of writing. 

Blockworks Research analyst Spencer Hughes noted that the Balancer vulnerability shows that smart contract audits cannot guarantee total safety, and that it is important to note that they never claimed to be.

“With ~$830M TVL, a Balancer exploit would have left one of the most prominent DEXs for dead,” Hughes said. “Emergency SubDAOs are definitely very important for all DeFi protocols, and it is great that they were able to act before anything malicious could occur.”


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template.png

Research

RTK networks are critical to enabling a world of ubiquitous autonomous drones, vehicles, and industrial robots. We believe the GEOD token enables both a cost and product advantage for the GEODNET RTK network, which will allow it to out-compete multi-billion dollar incumbents Trimble and Hexagon.

article-image

As EIP-4844 “blobs” transform the economics of Ethereum layer-2s, a growing debate pits long-term scalability against immediate ETH value

article-image

Prosecutors argued that FTX co-founder Gary Wang cooperated in their case against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

article-image

The two largest crypto exchanges respectively run the second- and sixth-largest Solana validators

article-image

MicroStrategy’s bitcoin buying has exploded — it now holds 1.7% of the asset’s circulating supply

article-image

The MiCA era will reward the prepared and punish the rest

article-image

The market is, presumably, confused about what a Trump win means for the social media company