In 2021, Forbes magazine published a ranking of the 100 richest people in Ukraine and the 59th place was taken by the crypto entrepreneur from Kharkov, Mykola Udianskyi. His fortune according to the magazine is estimated at $ 180 million. He was one of the first crypto investors in the CIS and today he is the founder of the digital holding Ehold, Bitcoin Ultimatum fork and many other projects.
As a reminder, Mykola acquired LocalTrade in September 2020 after the sale of the Coinsbit exchange in November 2019. Initially, it was planned to transfer LocalTrade under the jurisdiction of Montenegro and repurpose it for futures and OTC transactions, but later the entrepreneur announced the sale of the trading platform. Mykola Udianskyi decided to devote his time to other projects: he focused on the creation of regulated exchanges in the UK and Austria. The entrepreneur’s team is working on the launch of four new exchanges in England and the UAE, Ukraine and Montenegro are next in line this year. In addition, he recently launched the only available regulated exchange in India.
Currently, Mykola’s company is also working on the creation of a Digital Bank, the main feature of which is the simultaneous support of cryptocurrencies and their integration with the traditional banking system. The project is aiming for the implementation of innovative functionality that will make everyday calculations in cryptocurrency as simple as it is now through fiat.
Digital banking is one of the most important development areas in the cryptocurrency industry. Succeeding in this area will combine digital coins with conventional banking, which in turn will erase the line between fiat and cryptocurrencies.
New LocalTrade team and contractors The new leadership of Local Trade has pledged to turn blockchain and digital finance into understandable notions and revolutionize this field. The head of the company is CEO Aaron Levi Yahal. The new top manager has vast experience in marketing and has supported many financial and cryptocurrency projects. His many years of practice have proven to us that the projects Aaron had a hand on all ended up achieving excellent results. Perhaps the most famous one is PureFi, where he holds the position of RegTech Strategist. This is a unique protocol (unparallelled in the market) that allows AML technologies to be implemented in DeFi.
Alexandra Buimister is the chief operating officer of the exchange. Alexandra has a very rich portfolio: she has international experience in the fintech and financial sectors, in addition, she is the founder of alternative banking services. Alexandra has experience in leadership positions in many global brands: BCA Research (Euromoney PLC), Forbes Latvia & Finland, Supreme Group, etc.
Aaron’s team has ambitious plans for the future of the LocalTrade exchange. In order to implement them, he turned to the time-tested SPACE IT Blockchain contractors. The latter is a leading IT company from the UAE.
The CEO of LocalTrade is confident in the high-quality execution of the technical component of his own ideas since he has already used the services of SPACE IT Blockchain several times and knows from his own experience what high standards are set within the company.
How to get the most out of DeFi? According to the company’s management, they are planning on not only upgrading the platform, but they also want to create a fundamentally new product, which has no equal in the world. The community’s reaction to this news is overwhelmingly positive, traders can’t wait to test the updated product.
First and foremost, the team will focus on the security and usability of the updated platform. They intend on developing the FinTech industry, as well as integrate DeFi capabilities that will solve the existing problems through blockchain technology.
The implementation of DeFi completely removes intermediaries from the equation and puts smart contracts in their stead, which, in turn, create trusted protocols. In fact, decentralized finance almost completely eliminates the risk of losing funds due to fraudulent activities, since the user conducts all financial transactions through his personal wallet, the private keys of which are only with him.
The boom in decentralized finance came in the summer of 2020. The excitement in this area caused a huge increase in the prices of certain assets: the DeFi token YFI became an absolute record holder, which increased by 1280 times. Therefore, this branch of the digital economy is one of the most promising and important at the moment.
Although the DeFi topic is over a year old, it is still quite difficult to understand, especially for new crypto investors. On the Internet, there are a huge number of investment proposals in plenty of DeFi projects. However, the problem is that the overwhelming majority of market participants cannot conduct an objective analysis of each of them.
In order for non-professional investors to safely invest in this sector, LocalTrade is creating another product – Marketplace. Only verified DeFi projects will be included here, and users will be able to invest in them without restrictions.
DEX’s Launch Towards the end of summer – early fall 2021, the LocalTrade management plans to launch a decentralized exchange (DEX). The fundamental difference between this service and its centralized counterparts is security and a guarantee of complete anonymity.
The fact is that DEX does not collect nor store any user data on its servers (IP addresses, time zone, screen resolution data, and other digital prints). On decentralized exchanges, there is no need to go through the registration process, let alone verification (KYC / AML). And, most importantly, DEX does not store user funds in their wallets, so clients are the rightful owners of their assets.
Disadvantages of DEX Despite the many positive aspects, decentralized exchanges also have a number of disadvantages. Perhaps the primary weakness of DEX is the small selection of trading pairs and the lack of necessary liquidity in the least popular tokens.
Market makers and liquidity pools are responsible for trading cryptocurrencies on decentralized exchanges. In order to add a new trading pair to the exchange, you need to create a smart pool contract and lock in it a certain amount of an asset that provides liquidity.
Unoptimized smart contracts lead to various inconveniences:
long transaction processing time, high commissions, increased likelihood of canceling the transaction without a refund by gwey (applies to DEX on Ethereum). Solving the problem of sub-optimal smart contracts from LocalTrade The LocalTrade team intends to eliminate this deficiency, for this they decided to use the orderbook model. With its help, it will be possible to add new trading pairs without the need to register a separate smart contract for it each time.
For the creation of the DEX protocol, the LocalTrade team focused on optimizing smart contracts, namely, increasing the speed of work and at the same time reducing commission fees. In the near future, performance will be significantly improved by reformatting the system architecture based on Layer-2.
Loss on the course at high volumes Another problem that worries traders is the significant change in the rate during the processing of large volumes. LocalTrade has a solution to this problem as well: Traders will now set the maximum allowable price range themselves.
All of the above sounded like a fairy tale just a year ago, but now it is already a prospect for the near future. If you look at Aaron’s past and follow the further development of his projects, then we can safely say that the grandiose changes to LocalTrade that he talks about are only a matter of time. We just need to be patient and wait for the best blockchain developers to embody the ideas of Aaron Levi Yahal.
Image: Mykola Udianskyi and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao
DeFi tokens have not witnessed any massive price change over the past few week. For instance, the likes of Uniswap, Marker and PancakeSwap rallied by only 10%, 8% and 2.3% respectively, in the aforementioned time window. However, tokens such AAVE and YFI, managed to appreciate slightly higher [17% each], successfully demonstrating their strength.
However, the question remains, as to whether or not these two tokens would be able to carry on their respective rallies.
Market Sentiment The market has been quite favorable to traders advocating the price-drop narrative and the long-short liquidation data supported the aforementioned claim. Over the past 12 hours, $270k worth of YFI long contracts were liquidated when compared to the mere $56k worth of short contracts.
Source: ByBt With AAVE too, $851k worth of long contracts were forcefully closed, when compared to the mere $129k worth of short contracts. The funding rate on all major exchanges, for both the tokens, was negative at the time of writing, thus intensifying the bearish sentiment.
Additionally, the OI data revealed another not-so-healthy trend. Even though the number of outstanding derivative contracts witnessed a slight spike of late, they were nowhere near their pre-set benchmarks. As seen from the chart attached, YFI’s OI peaked at $137.2 million during May this year, while its current value [$54.08 million] is not even half of the same. AAVE’s OI too, for that matter, has to bridge a gap of close to $90 million to reach its previous peak.
Source: ByBt On-chain setbacks The state of on-chain metrics for both these tokens also remained unsatisfactory. For starters, less than one-fourth of the addresses that were active during the initial few months of the year, for both YFI and AAVE, were active at press time. The decreased participation, by and large, points out the fragile state of their respective blockchain’s activity.
Further, the balance on exchanges have been gradually increasing. In fact, they’ve been depicting contrasting trends when compared to their previous rallies. A day back, for instance, more than 16.4k AAVE tokens were sent to exchanges, outlining the fact that participants were gradually cashing out.
Source: Glassnode Well, it is quite obvious that the rallies of both these DeFi tokens lack momentum. Ergo, without the same re-entering their respective markets, traders shouldn’t expect any unreasonable pump. The next few days would indeed, test the resilience of these two tokens.
Uniswap, AAVE, Maker, and Yearn.Finance are some of the best performing DeFi assets existing in the space at the moment. While DeFi has grown monumentally over the past few months, with Cardano releasing its smart contracts mainnet today, the excitement is unmatched. Even so, the market has seen a significant drop in DeFi’s value. And with it, these altcoins took a hit as well.
DeFi goes down Total value locked in DeFi this week fell hard dropping by about $11 billion, from $98 billion. This is not necessarily new, as this has occurred twice this year earlier after a bull run, first in Feb then May. In February it fell by $18 billion and in May it fell by $19 billion.
However, at $87 billion, it was still way higher than ever before, so there isn’t much to worry about there.
DeFi TVL in the past | Source: DeFi Pulse – AMBCrypto In accordance with the drop in TVL, the DeFi Pulse Index (DPI) fell by 16.62% at press time. At its worst, it plunged by 24.01%. The worry although is when it came to the top-performing DeFi assets such as Uniswap (UNI), AAVE, Maker (MKR), and Yearn.Finance (YFI).
In the last 5 days, each of these tokens dropped over 20%. Uniswap witnessed the highest fall of all, as it went all the way down to 26.86% (UNI)
Uniswaps 26% fall | Source: TradingView – AMBCrypto So which asset is the best? Even though UNI fell the most, it was also the strongest in terms of network performance. MVRV ratio and the network value to transactions showed stark dominance of Uniswap over the other altcoins.
MVRV of the assets | Source: Coinmetrics – AMBCrypto As for investor participation, once again UNI lead, followed by AAVE, YFI, and MKR. Uniswap is once again the best performer, both in terms of daily active addresses and transaction numbers.
Active Address for the coins | Source: Coinmetrics – AMBCrypto But in terms of profitability, the ranks changed. MKR is the most profitable option at the moment with YFI and UNI following it. Here AAVE came out as a bad asset since its profitability is a mere 37%.
AAVE’s profitability is at 37% | Source: Intotheblock – AMBCrypto However, here are the latest updates. UniCode hackathon event announced for the Uniswap community. Maker Foundation moved to dissolve itself in order to give way to a completely decentralized network. Lastly, $868k earnings reported by YFI in Q2, through yield farming treasuries.
These were helping the price rise and make the 3 alts, a better choice of investment. So AAVE, may be the one here to stay away from.
Digital asset analytics firm Santiment is looking at a handful of altcoins to gauge crypto’s strength after the global market cap tanked by 8% in less than a day.
In a new Santiment Insights report, the crypto intelligence company analyzes what it calls “blue chips” in the ERC-20 market segment: Shiba Inu (SHIB), Uniswap (UNI), Yearn.Finance (YFI), Aave (AAVE) and Chainlink (LINK).
While assessing crypto inflow into exchanges, Santiment highlights meme coin SHIB as a positive metric.
“People seem to be very confident in their holdings. SHIB for example.
A declining trend of SHIB being deposited to exchanges is indicating that traders are not afraid of Shiba going down. They are not going to send tokens to exchanges to sell.”
Source: Santiment On the topic of exchanges and exchange inflow, Santiment also looks at decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap.
“Three increasing spikes might indicate people were looking to take profits just before the dump.
But nothing similar after the dump itself.”
Source: Santiment In terms of active deposits, the firm sees only one negative indicator from crypto yield optimizer YFI.
“No worries or minimal worries visible. Except for YFI.”
Source: Santiment Moving on to network profit and loss, Santiment says that four of the five altcoins avoided panic sell-offs.
“Interesting that the picture here is completely the same again: almost no panic sells except in YFI.”
Source: Santiment The fourth indicator involves the amount of time since a crypto asset was last moved, known as the age consumed. Santiment says it’s a good sign that long-term holders don’t appear to be moving their tokens onto exchanges.
“All five tokens do not have any significant outliers here. Likely no huge old bags moved or sold. It’s looking like this on charts.”
Source: Santiment Finally, the firm looks at what whales holding between $500,000 and $50 million worth of crypto are doing with their bags. Only decentralized price feed service Chainlink shows a downtrend.
“Is it standing still (nothing special) or going down (whales offloading the bags)?
Here we can say that only one token from five is showing a downtrend in whales’ balances [over the] last day. It’s LINK.”
Source: Santiment Santiment concludes its analysis by saying,
“We do not see many signs of panic or sell-offs within selected ERC-20 tokens.
One altcoin that helps holders earn yields is seeing its own value soar even as the broader crypto markets try to shake off a recent slump.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Yearn.Finance (YFI) offers lending and trading services so users can optimize their crypto asset earnings.
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The YFI token’s price jumped by 50% virtually overnight after word spread that Yearn had gone on a major shopping spree buying back its own token.
Yearn says in a tweet to its 159,200 followers,
“Yearn has purchased $7,526,343 worth of YFI from the open market. We got 282.4 YFI (0.77% of total supply) at an average price of $26,651.
More YFI has been bought back in the past month than in the prior year.”
Yearn reports that its treasury now holds over $45 million and intends to do more buybacks in the future.
In the investing world, companies often do buybacks when they believe their shares are undervalued or to reward existing holders by reducing the total available supply.
The move is paying off in a big way for the Ethereum-based protocol. YFI’s price has surged from a weekly low of $18,877 on Wednesday all the way to $28,802 at time of writing, including a nearly 20% rise on the day.
When Yearn first launched in July of 2020, the YFI token was worth around $30, then skyrocketed to a staggering valuation above $90,000 back in May before crashing down to $33,000 within days.
Like most of the crypto markets, YFI has experienced choppy price action in recent months.
An altcoin that helps holders earn yields is lapping the field as the crypto markets try to recover from a difficult month.
Yearn.Finance (YFI) is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that offers lending and trading services so users can optimize their crypto asset earnings.
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The YFI token’s price has been on fire over the past week, more than doubling from $18,867 on December 15th to a high of $39,353 on December 20th.
The altcoin first got a boost last week as word spread that Yearn had gone on a major shopping spree buying back its own token.
Yearn tweeted that it had purchased over $7.5 million worth of YFI, adding that its treasury was armed with $45 million with the intention of buying more tokens in the future.
Yearn’s price continues to surge as the community now considers a change in YFI’s tokenomics.
At the top of the list is the suggestion that token holders active in Yearn governance be rewarded with a portion of buybacks.
Yearn says in a tweet,
“Tokenomics, rewarding YFI holders with the… token buybacks, diluting paper hands for the benefit of the blue-pilled diamond hands.”
Next is a four-stage proposal involving a combination of rewards, locking tokens in vaults for set periods of time, and credit for performing useful work.
The process is outlined in a series of illustrated tweets.
“Step 1: xYFI. Stake in the xYFI vault, earn bought back YFI from the treasury. Simple as that.”
Source: 0x7171/Twitter “Step 2: veYFI. Vote-lock YFI, with decay and time extension. Max-lock and earn disproportionate rewards compared to those who lock for a shorter duration. Early exit any time but pay a penalty to the other stakers.”
Source: 0x7171/Twitter “Step 3: Vault gauges. Stake your yVault token in a gauge, earn YFI rewards, boosted by how much veYFI you have staked. Vote on which vaults should get allocated rewards. Pay a penalty to other stakers if you don’t have a strong enough lock.”
Source: 0x7171/Twitter Step four involves engaging in “useful work,” which could include “configuring vault parameters, setting fees, providing insurance.”
At time of writing, YFI is down 9.25% on the day and trading for $34,553.
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Fantom Foundation has responded to the news of Andre Conje exiting crypto. The announcement which came early on Sunday saw Anton Nell and Andre Conje announce their departure from crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) and any contribution thereof. This had sent shocked the community as it came seemingly out of nowhere, leaving many questioning the fate of the blockchain.
Fantom Foundation had been quick to respond and address these concerns, assuring the community that the departure would not adversely harm the development of the project in any way. The foundation explained that Conje’s contribution to crypto had been immense but that Fantom was not a “one-man team” meaning that the exit of a single dev would not derail the project in any way.
Related Reading | Mastercard, Visa, Paypal Suspend Russian Operations – No Love For Russia?
Furthermore, Fantom Foundation added that Conje was not a “core dev”. The project will continue along in its development as there are more than 40 others who continue to work tirelessly towards the success of the network. In addition to hundreds of developers and 100K+ unique addresses that continue to carry out transactions on the network daily.
The foundation referred to Conje as a “big picture guy” who had worked closely with the CEO, but noted that his decision to leave the crypto world would have no impact on the network. Development will carry on as scheduled, the foundation explains, and are still on track to ship notable upgrades expected in the short term.
Therefore, the development of Fantom won't be impacted by Andre's decision.
Big things are coming, as scheduled.
We're still on track to ship snapsync and a db upgrade in the short term and to release middleware improvements such as flat storage and the fvm.
— Sonic (@SonicLabs) March 6, 2022
Why Is Andre Conje Leaving Fantom? Conje had been a notable figure in the Fantom community going as far back as 2018 given his involvement and contribution to the development of the network. He further went on to spearhead popular projects like Yearn Finance (YFI) and Keep3r Network, alongside others, further solidifying his role as a key player on the Fantom network. This is why the dev’s exit has come as a shock.
Related Reading | Ethereum Gains Edge Over Stock Market, What’s the Key to Fresh Rally In an announcement that was posted on Twitter, Anton Nell explained that he and Conje had made the decision to leave crypto and DeFi. Explaining the reasoning behind this, Nell said that it was “not a knee-jerk reaction to the hate received from releasing a project, but a decision that has been coming for a while now.” This means that they have been planning the departure for a while.
Following the announcement, the prices of projects Conje was involved with had taken a plunge. Fantom’s FTM token had fallen 8% from above $1.5 to $1.39 and YFI had seen $3k wiped off its value as it plunged from $20K to $17K. These tokens have since begun to find balance after this but continue to suffer effects from the news.
FTM tumbles after Nell's announcement | Source: FTMUSD on TradingView.com Featured image from CryptoWisser, chart from TradingView.com
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The largest Ethereum (ETH) whales in the world are accumulating decentralized oracle network Chainlink (LINK) and several altcoins that prioritize decentralization.
According to blockchain tracker WhaleStats, the top 100 Ethereum whales are currently most interested in a pair of stablecoins and over a half dozen altcoins, with Chainlink in sixth place and seeing an average buy-in of $186,693 for 25,576 LINK tokens.
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Ethereum whales are also scooping up decentralized derivatives exchange Serum (SRM), spending on average $299,901 for 249,918 SRM tokens.
The wealthy investors are keen on the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, particularly the yield-optimizing protocol Yearn.Finance (YFI). The whales bought three YFI tokens for an average price tag of $25,883.
Decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch (1INCH) finds itself in 10th place this week, as the whales shelled out $3,020 to acquire 3,096 1INCH tokens.
Coming in second overall was FTX Token (FTT), the native asset of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, with an average buy-in of $301,121 getting the whales 9,847 FTT.
Eighth on the list is Rari Governance (RGT), the native token of the DeFi startup Rari Capital, and the rich wallets bagged 1,482 RGT tokens for $10,240.
In ninth place is Tribe (TRIBE), the governance token of the Fei Protocol which aims to bring stablecoin economics to DeFi. The whales spent on average $6,936 for 27,557 TRIBE.
US Dollar Coin (USDC) and Tether (USDT) are the two most accumulated stablecoins among ETH whales, with USDC actually taking the first spot among the top 10 popular tokens with an average buy-in exceeding $1.62 million.
Source: WhaleStats Ethereum itself ranks fifth overall with the whales spending an average of $241,251 to accumulate 119 ETH tokens.
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Decentralized exchange (DEX) dYdX has had to take out millions from its insurance fund to cover user liquidations on its platform, according to a recent announcement. This action was forced by the recent liquidations in the Yearn.Finance (YFI) market.
What Led To The $9 Million Insurance Fund Withdrawal? On Saturday, November 18, the Yearn.Finance’s governance token (YFI) witnessed a drastic 43% decline in value, leading to a wipeout of $50 million in YFI Open Interest.
Consequently, this dramatic drop in price triggered a moment of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) within the crypto community, with some members speculating on the possibility of an exit scam.
In a post on the X (formerly Twitter) platform, the team behind dYdX disclosed that about $9 million from the platform’s v3 insurance fund was used to fill gaps in liquidations processed in the YFI market.
Last night about $9m from the dYdX v3 insurance fund were used to fill gaps on liquidations processed in the YFI market. The v3 insurance fund remains well funded with $13.5m in funds remaining
No user funds were affected and our team is working to investigate the event
— dYdX (@dYdX) November 18, 2023
According to the decentralized exchange’s website, the insurance fund is “the first backstop to maintain the solvency of the system when an account has a negative balance.” The fund is not decentralized, meaning that the protocol’s team is directly responsible for deposits to and withdrawals from it.
In the announcement, the protocol’s team also clarified that the insurance reserve still remains “well-funded” with $13.5 million left. However, this only means that the protocol was forced to part with about 40% of its initial balance to cover the liquidations in the YFI market.
Furthermore, the team asserted that no user funds were affected by this event. And they also revealed that they are currently investigating the incident.
dYdX Founder Claims ‘Targeted Attack’ – What Next? In a separate post on X, dYdX founder Antonio Juliano made accusations of market manipulation in the Yearn.Finance token market. The executive said:
This was pretty clearly a targeted attack against dYdX, including market manipulation of the entire $YFI market.
Juliano reiterated that the protocol is currently investigating the incident alongside other partners. And the founder promised to be fully transparent with the results of their findings.
This was pretty clearly a targeted attack against dYdX, including market manipulation of the entire $YFI market
We are investigating alongside several partners and will be transparent with what we discover https://t.co/djWHaaPIua
— Antonio(@AntonioMJuliano) November 18, 2023
Furthermore, Antonio Juliano mentioned that there will be a thorough review of the protocol’s risk parameters. “We will be making appropriate changes to both v3 and potentially the dYdX Chain software if necessary,” he added.
dYdX remains one of the largest trading platforms in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. As of this writing, the protocol boasts a total value locked of $372 million, according to data from DefiLlama.
DYDX price rebounds on the daily timeframe | Source: DYDXUSDT on TradingView Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView
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The founder of layer-1 blockchain Sonic (S) is speaking up about his decision to step away from crypto in 2022, two years after launching the decentralized finance (Defi) platform Yearn Finance (YFI).
In a post on Medium, Andre Cronje says he stopped his public engagement with DeFi because of regulatory pressure.
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He says it all started in 2021 when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent him a letter asking for more information on YFI, including whether he raised funds and who the investors were.
Cronje says he complied and provided as much information as he could provide, but the SEC continued to send him letters that later became hostile in tone. The regulator investigated him on different issues, including violations, which Cronje says confused him because he is not a US citizen or resident and he neither sold anything to anyone in the US.
“The letters kept coming, every time pivoting to a new angle of attack. It started ‘investigating’ me from the angle of a raise and SEC violation… When it became apparent that [the raise] was not an angle of attack, it shifted to focusing on the yearn vaults themselves as ‘investment vehicles’.”
Cronje says the time and effort it took him to answer the questions from the regulator diverted his attention.
“At this point, I was practically forced to completely stop development or R&D, and focus solely on this legal and regulatory battle.”
He says the sleepless nights and stress of the ordeal prompted him to quit.
“All in all this took 2 years of my life and finally culminated in a point where I was essentially given a choice. I can keep trying to build things for free, receive no benefit, spend hours of my energy and time to release this code into the wild, while needing to constantly face these attacks and have to spend months of my life and real money to defend it. Or I need to step away.”
Cronje says he is now sharing his experience as the SEC takes a new direction.
“I finally figured I can actually write about this, as previously I was strongly advised by those same investigators to not mention the investigation or it could escalate things.”
They always come back, more inventive, more technical. Hackers have just struck a new blow in the crypto sphere. This time, Yearn Finance is the victim. Outcome: 9 million dollars vanished. Behind the exploit, a bug of rare complexity in the yETH contract. On the surface, a simple swap. In depth, mathematical chaos. And worst of all, this is not an isolated case.
In brief Yearn Finance loses 9 million due to a flaw in a custom swap contract. The technical bug: a division omitted in the calculation of the virtual balance product. The attacker uses temporary contracts to drain assets and obfuscate the trail. A single transaction is enough to pocket 100% of the affected yETH pool liquidity. When arithmetic explodes: a bug worth millions On November 30, a user was able to create 2.35 × 10³⁸ yETH thanks to a subtle flaw in the swap() function of the smart contract. This contract was supposed to maintain a balance rule between tokens. Except a critical division was omitted in the formula. Result: the variable vb_prod ran away. Like a speedometer stuck in overdrive, it deceived the protocol about its own health.
The exploit was confirmed by PeckShield, who alerted in a tweet that nearly 9 million dollars had been lost. Part of the funds — about 3 million in ETH — was sent via Tornado Cash, a famous crypto mixer used to obscure trails. The rest still sleeps in the hacker’s address.
The severity of the bug is not a simple oversight. As Ilia.eth explained on X:
Today’s exploitation of the $yETH pool was not a flash loan type price attack, but indeed a structural collapse of the AMM’s internal accounting. Here is a technical analysis showing how a simple omitted division led to complete protocol drainage.
This flaw painfully recalls the precedent of Balancer, where poor rounding management caused similar chaos. Same cause, same effect: uncontrolled monetary creation followed by a legitimate but destructive withdrawal.
Helper contracts to raze Yearn Finance’s architecture It’s not just the bug that impresses. It’s the attack engineering. In a single transaction, the hacker orchestrated everything: deployment of “helper contracts,” token minting, conversion to ETH, fund transfer, and self-destruction of contracts to erase traces.
According to Blockscout, each helper contract executed a targeted call to the vulnerable function, then sent the ETH to a master wallet before disappearing. A strategy worthy of a heist movie, where the robber erases his digital footprints in the same second he acts.
The key address identified by several analysts is: 0xa80d…c822, currently still holding about 6 million in stETH, rETH, and other Ethereum derivatives.
On X, William Li offers further reading:
The hacker actually did not withdraw all the yETH he created, he only sold part of it in the yETH-ETH pool for 1,000 ETH (about 3 million dollars) — which is far less than the real gain he made (P2).
More than a theft, it is therefore a controlled disintegration of the yETH protocol. And behind the attack, a deep mathematical knowledge, coupled with cold and precise programming talent.
Crypto and trust: when code becomes Achilles’ heel Yearn Finance is far from an amateur project. Yet, the flaw was detected neither by users nor by audits. This is where the matter becomes worrying for the entire crypto market. Because this type of error — a multiplication instead of a division — could exist elsewhere, lurking in other protocols.
The yETH contract structure is a hybrid between Curve and Balancer. Except that instead of recalculating each transaction, it stores an intermediate state (vb_prod) supposed to be updated after each swap. A dangerous practice, according to Ilia.eth:
Storing complex product results (vb_prod) to update them incrementally is extremely risky. Errors accumulate, and the slightest logical bug can remain active indefinitely. It would be better to recalculate invariants from current balances.
The hack revives the debate: should gas economy or rigor be prioritized? One thing is certain: the consequences of a botched trade-off now amount to millions. At Yearn, the time is for remobilization: SEAL911, ChainSecurity, and a post-mortem investigation are already on the front line.
5 key facts about the Yearn Finance exploit November 30, 2025: date of the hack; $9 million: estimated total losses; 2.35 × 10³⁸ yETH: artificially created tokens; Single transaction: the entire attack happened in one block; Helper contracts: deployed, used, then self-destructed. Calculation errors in crypto do not forgive. And for good reason: it’s not another audit that would have avoided the carnage. Balancer, despite 11 security audits, was also emptied by an almost twin bug. A simple multiplication factor can become a weapon of mass destruction when finance becomes programmable. Protocols have short memory, but blockchains never forget.
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Mikaia A.
La révolution blockchain et crypto est en marche ! Et le jour où les impacts se feront ressentir sur l’économie la plus vulnérable de ce Monde, contre toute espérance, je dirai que j’y étais pour quelque chose
DISCLAIMER
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.
Getting robbed is one thing. Recovering your property is another. In the crypto universe, where the slightest flaw can turn into an algorithmic heist, you need cool-headedness, solid allies, and a keen nose for the chase. That is exactly what Yearn Finance demonstrated. No time to dwell on it. Battle-ready, the protocol launched a race against time to get back a vanished digital fortune. And the story is worth the detour.
In brief The bug allowed minting 2.3544×10^56 yETH and draining pools in minutes. A crypto alliance managed to recover 857.49 pxETH, equivalent to $2.4 million. The targeted contract was isolated, with no link to other Yearn Finance vaults. The attack used self-destructing contracts and Tornado Cash to mask transactions. Express Rescue: Yearn Finance Recovers $2.4M in the Heart of the Storm When the alert sounded, the scene was already a field of ruins. On November 30, an attacker minted an absurd amount of yETH tokens – precisely 2.3544 × 10^56 units – from an unchecked arithmetic bug. In minutes, nearly $9 million was siphoned from two DeFi pools: yETH and yETH-WETH on Curve.
But Yearn Finance did not let chaos settle in. Immediately, the protocol mobilized a recovery commando. Plume Network, Dinero, SEAL911, and ChainSecurity formed an interoperable “war room” to identify and locate the funds. Result: 857.49 pxETH, equivalent to $2.4M, was recovered, secured, and promised to the affected users.
The tweet from @yearnfi set the tone:
With the assistance of the Plume and Dinero teams, a coordinated recovery of 857.49 pxETH ($2.39m) was performed. Recovery efforts remain active and ongoing. Any assets successfully recovered will be returned to affected depositors.
What this action shows is the growing maturity of DeFi projects. This ability to launch a complex crypto rescue plan amidst turmoil is a resilience marker rarely seen in an industry that often patches leaks after shipwrecks.
Yearn Finance has, in short, given a post-hacking coordination lesson. While some lock themselves in silence, the platform chose openness, collaboration, and action.
Crypto Under Pressure: A Bug, Billions of Tokens, and a DeFi Challenge The exploit was no simple opportunistic theft. It was a precision attack. Using self-destructing helper contracts, the hacker masked their tracks. These small code bits, once their dirty work is done, erase themselves like spies who are never found. A method already seen in the Balancer hack, showing the level is rising.
Fortunately, the targeted contract was custom code. No impact was reported on Yearn Finance’s V2 or V3 vaults. The team hammered this message to reassure its users. In this unstable galaxy that is DeFi, trust is won and regained with every line of code.
But it didn’t stop there. A portion of the stolen funds was sent to Tornado Cash, an anonymization tool well-known among hackers. This anonymizer, now a refuge for suspicious funds, continues to fuel the tug-of-war between ethics, privacy, and traceability in the crypto sector.
However, Yearn Finance did not flee. It took the mic, owned the mistake, announced a post-mortem investigation, and mobilized its partners to strengthen future defenses. A choice praised by the community, which prefers an admission a thousand times over silence.
What this attack reveals is both the sophistication of hackers and the adaptability of protocols. Crypto is under pressure, but crypto learns fast.
In Numbers, Dates, and Key Facts Date of attack: November 30, 4:11 PM EST; Amount stolen: about $9M, including $8M from the yETH pool; Amount recovered: $2.4M (857.49 pxETH); Flaw: unchecked arithmetic bug + helper contracts; Allies mobilized: Plume, Dinero, SEAL911, ChainSecurity. In the crypto industry, memory is sharp. We recall the Curve Finance hacker who, sure of his genius, didn’t hesitate to mock the community after siphoning millions. Yet, this arrogance is often short-lived. Because in the world of code and chains, the union of defenders always fights back.
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Mikaia A.
La révolution blockchain et crypto est en marche ! Et le jour où les impacts se feront ressentir sur l’économie la plus vulnérable de ce Monde, contre toute espérance, je dirai que j’y étais pour quelque chose
DISCLAIMER
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.
