Key Takeaways
- Decentralized derivatives trade Aevo suffered a hack on its legacy DeFi choices vault (DOV), leading to attackers draining roughly $2.7 million in wstETH, LINK, AAVE, ETH, and USDC.
- Safety analysts traced the exploit to a latest protocol improve that supported 18-decimal pricing for belongings on the Ribbon vaults. Nevertheless, this inadvertently allowed anybody to set costs for newly added tokens and manipulate choices contracts.
- Roughly 32% of all belongings within the Opyn/Ribbon oracle stack have been misplaced to the hack, with the attacker changing the stolen belongings to ETH and USDC earlier than distributing them throughout 15 pockets addresses.
- Aevo confirmed that its Opyn platform stays unaffected and has since decommissioned the Ribbon vault. The trade has opened a 6-month declare window, throughout which customers can withdraw their belongings, and they are going to be made complete by the Aevo DAO’s personal positions and from funds held in bigger dormant accounts.
Derivatives-focused decentralized trade Aevo, previously Ribbon Finance, has suffered a multi-million greenback exploit after hackers focused its outdated good contract system. The hack occurred six days after an Oracle improve that enabled value manipulation on the DEX.
Aveo makes a speciality of choices and perpetual contracts, supporting leveraged buying and selling with as much as 20x leverage on belongings like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL). It focuses on high-performance buying and selling by a customized Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM) rollup know-how.
Aevo DEX Hit by $2.7M Oracle Exploit; Hackers Drain 32% of DOV Vaults
In accordance with blockchain safety specialists, attackers drained roughly $2.7 million in varied crypto belongings from its legacy decentralized choices vaults (DOVs), forcing Aevo to completely shut all operations and instructing customers to withdraw their belongings hours after the assault was detected on Sunday, December 14.
The vault containing structured crypto merchandise held over $300 million in complete worth locked throughout its peak, and remained energetic on Ethereum even after Ribbon Finance transitioned into Aevo in 2023. The staff confirmed that its major trade and person funds held in commonplace buying and selling accounts on the Aevo Chain – a layer-2 Ethereum rollup on the OP Stack – stay unaffected.
The attackers exploited vulnerabilities in Aevo’s not too long ago upgraded Oracle pricing mechanism by abusing its proxy admin contract. This allowed the wrongdoer to achieve unauthorized entry to regulate value updates on the Opyn/Ribbon oracle stack. They proceeded to create poorly structured choices utilizing legit whitelisted tokens corresponding to wstETH, LINK, AAVE, PAXG, and WBTC to push arbitrary costs at a standard expiry timestamp and keep away from detection in the course of the setup. They then used these choices contracts to set off false settlements throughout DOVs linked to the good contract, extracting roughly 32% of the belongings held in them.
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On-chain analysts famous that the exploit was made potential by a December 6 improve to Aevo’s oracle code that helps 18-decimal pricing for sure digital belongings, excluding USDC. This launched a essential flaw that allowed anybody to set pretend costs throughout any token with a shared timestamp.
The hacker used the stETH-based Tokens, collateralized with WETH, to set off settlements on the contract by forcing the oracle to acknowledge fraudulent valuations. The good contract then launched roughly 900 ETH ($2.8 million) and lots of of USDC holdings to wallets managed by the attacker, who then distributed the belongings throughout 15 completely different addresses, a lot of which maintain roughly 100 ETH ($314,638) every.
For the reason that oToken creation course of was carried out correctly, it was handed as a reputable transaction, however the lack of payout caps allowed unchecked asset withdrawal. Specialists who investigated the case confirmed that whereas the Ribbon’s oracle improve was affected, it didn’t compromise Aevo’s Opyn contracts.
Aevo Shuts Ribbon Vaults, Opens 6-Month Declare Window, Vows Full Compensation through DAO Funds
Hours after the assault, Aevo stated in an X assertion that it has decommissioned all Ribbon vaults. The trade famous that affected customers will solely be topic ot a 19% discount on their place’s worth on the time of the hack. This was potential as a result of the Aevo DAO will forfeit its personal vault positions, valued at roughly $400,000 in varied belongings, to offset the theft; thereby decreasing internet losses to $2.3 million, and liquidating belongings from accounts with bigger deposits which were dormant for greater than three years and are unlikely to withdraw any funds.
“We’re proposing to prioritize energetic customers by granting them a smaller discount upfront. Given the anticipated dormancy fee, there’s a powerful likelihood that customers who withdraw in the course of the declare window will in the end be made complete after the ultimate distribution,” the staff wrote.
Aevo’s declare window will run for the following six months, from December 12 to June 12, 2026. After the deadline, the DAO will liquidate all remaining belongings and distribute them to customers who beforehand withdrew, both compensating for the lacking 19% or as a lot as stays out there.
Oracle manipulation strategies stay a persistent DeFi assault vector and have change into more and more refined. Oracle-related exploits account for a good portion of the sector’s losses this yr. In November alone, $137 million in varied belongings have been misplaced throughout the DeFi house, affecting main platforms like Balancer and Yearn Finance. Earlier this yr, Venus Protocol on the ZKsync blockchain misplaced $717,000 in an analogous exploit to Aevo. In accordance with information from DefiLlama, the DeFi sector has misplaced over $2.5 billion to hacks in 2025.
On the time of writing, Aevo (AEVO) is buying and selling at $0.04102 – down 0.15% in 24 hours.
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