Venus Protocol halted THE borrows after exploit drained over $3.7M

Venus Protocol said it detected suspicious trading activity in the Thena (THE) token liquidity pool and has paused all THE borrows and withdrawals while it investigates. The unusual activity affected only pools for the Cake (CAKE) and Thena tokens. Allez Labs, identified by Venus as its risk manager, suspects a supply cap attack executed in two phases: a steady accumulation of about 84% of THE's market cap followed by a lending attack.

The exploiter used THE as collateral to borrow 6.67 million CAKE, 1.58 million USDC, 2,801 BNB and 20 Bitcoin; withdrawals and borrowing for other low-liquidity tokens were also temporarily halted as a precaution. Wu Blockchain reported the total loss at more than $3.7 million.

At the time of publication, THE was trading at $0.2255 apiece, down more than 17% in the last 24 hours, pricing data on CoinMarketCap.com showed. The incident underscores cybersecurity and code-exploit risks facing crypto users and decentralized finance platforms as the sector grows.

venus protocol, thena, the token, cake token, liquidity pool, supply cap, allez labs, exploit, usdc, bitcoin