Beanstalk Farms (BEAN) plummets after protocol suffered a $182M exploit

LAGOS (CoinChapter.com) — Beanstalk Farms, a credit-focused stablecoin protocol built on Ethereum, is the latest DeFi project to fall victim to another brutal cyber attack.

In detail, the Ethereum-based stablecoin protocol was exploited for $182 million after a hacker successfully infiltrated the project. Blockchain security firm PeckShield, which disclosed the hack, also revealed that the hacker carted away $80 million in ETH and BEAN.

The hacker reportedly exchanged the stolen BEAN for ETH and funneled the exploited funds through Tornado Cash. PeckShield further revealed that the remaining funds were in the form of drained liquidity connected to the protocol’s governance token.

“Our initial analysis shows BeanstalkFarms loss is $182m. Here is the breakdown of stolen assets: 79,238,241 BEAN3CRV-f; 1,637,956 BEANLUSD-f; 36,084,584 BEAN; and 0.54 UNI-V2_WETH_BEAN,” PeckShied revealed.

How Beanstalk Farms Exploit Occurred

The attack took place hours after Beanstalk Farms announced that it had attracted more than $150 million in TVL.

The hacker reportedly used an accumulation of governance tokens obtained through a flash loan to carry out the attack. Mainly, the hacker obtained about a $1 billion loan from the Aave protocol in DAI (DAI), USD Coin (USDC), and Tether (USDT) stablecoins.

The loan enabled the hacker to acquire a large amount of Beanstalk’s native governance token, Stalk. With the voting power granted by these Stalk tokens, the hacker quickly passed a malicious governance proposal, moving all of Beanstalk’s funds into a private Ethereum wallet.

Technically, the exploit was not a hack, as the smart contracts and governance protocols worked as intended. Notably, the design flaw of the stablecoin protocol was only exploited.

BEAN Price Drops 85% Following Attack

As a result of the exploit, Beanstalk Farms’ native token BEAN has plummeted by more than 85%, according to data from Coingecko. Meanwhile, the token at the time of publication is trading at $0.13, down from its $1 peg.

Interestingly, following the successful exploit of Beanstalk Farms Protocol, the hacker donated $250,000 of the stolen funds to a Ukrainian relief wallet.