$200 million stolen in 5 days via DeFi

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Three major DeFi exploits have taken place within the last week. This time around, we are seeing DeFi projects on emerging platforms like the Binance Smart Chain become the victim of hacks, exploits, and security breaches.

These aren’t the first DeFi exploits of 2021, however, they are unlikely to be the last.

Meerkat Finance

On March 4th, Meerkat Finance, a DeFi project launched on the Binance Smart Chain, was the victim of an exploit that drained $31 million from the project. The exploit took place just one day after Meerkat Finance launched.

Many believe that the Meerkat Finance attack was a rug-pull/exit scam, an attack in which the creator of the project or the project’s team members drain the funds to their own wallets. Shortly after the attack took place, the Meerkat Finance website and Twitter account were deleted.

PAID Network

On March 5th, Ethereum-based project PAID Network was exploited for $160 million. The attacker was able to exploit the PAID contract’s token minting feature to fraudulently mint roughly $60 million worth of PAID tokens to their own wallet. Subsequently, the attacker exchanged their newly minted tokens through Uniswap in return for about 2,000 ETH.

Dodo Finance

The most recent DeFi attack that took place was the Dodo Finance exploit. Dodo Finance is a decentralized exchange that lives on both Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. On March 8th, the Dodo Finance attacker was able to exploit a bug in the Dodo contract that allowed them to fraudulently mint new tokens, the attacker also used flash loans to make the most of their attack.

Afterward, the attacker used their illicitly minted tokens and funds from the flash loan to drain the Dodo Finance liquidity pools to the tune of approximately $3.8 million.

However, the Dodo Finance team believes that $1.88 million in stolen funds will be recovered.