TempleDAO Loses $2 Million in Latest Exploit
Funds were converted to ether and moved to a new wallet
Source: DALL·E
key takeaways
- An estimated 1.1 million TEMPLE was sold off
- The root cause of the exploit was insufficient access control to the migrateStake function, according to BlockSec
TempleDAO, a yield-farming DeFi protocol, has been exploited for around $2.34 million.
All funds exploited were converted to ether and then moved to a new wallet, where they now sit.
The pseudonymous Doc Peppercorn, a contributor to TempleDAO, posted on its Discord group that a series of transactions through Stax Finance, a TempleDAO-affiliated dapp, led to the sell-off of an estimated 1.1 million TEMPLE, the primary token of the Temple Protocol.
“We are investigating what happened so we can bring you the full picture of how this occurred, what we did to resolve and any further remediation steps,” he wrote.
The root cause of the exploit was insufficient access control to a specific function in the Stax smart contract, according to security firm BlockSec.
Prior to the exploit, TempleDAO’s protocol’s total value locked was about $57 million, according to DeFiLlama. The exploit amounted to roughly 4% of the protocol’s assets.
According to a recent report published by bug bounty and security services platform, Immunefi, DeFi protocols remain a key target for exploits in comparison to centralized finance — representing a total of 98.8% of losses in Q3 of 2022 — with the Nomad Bridge hack and the Wintermute exploit making up the majority of the losses.
The two most targeted chains were Binance’s BNB Chain, which was recently drained of over 2 million BNB, and Ethereum, according to the report.
At the time when the report was published, the BNB Chain had suffered from 16 individual attacks resulting in the loss of 28.6% of all losses across targeted chains, and Ethereum reported 13 incidents which represented 23.2% of total losses.
The exploiter’s address was originally funded from an address on the Binance Exchange, so it’s possible the exchange may have know-your-customer information on the culprit.
A Binance spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Stax Finance is exploring its options.
Temple DAO said that its Core Vaults do not share code with Stax and are therefore unaffected.
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 On the Margin newsletter.
The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.
