Beanstalk DeFi Platform breached

Hackers have stolen nearly $180 million in cryptocurrency from Beanstalk Farms, decentralized finance (De-Fi) project.

Beanstalk operates a system where participants earn rewards by contributing funds to a central funding pool that is used to balance the value of one token at close to $1.

The hackers exploited Beanstalk’s majority vote governance system, a core feature of many Defi protocols. The attack was first spotted by blockchain analytics company PeckShield.

The Beanstalk attacker used a flash loan obtained through the decentralized protocol Aave to borrow close to $1 billion in cryptocurrency assets and exchanged these for enough beans to gain a 67 percent voting stake in the project.

The attacker then instantly repaid the flash loan, netting an $80 million profit, the report said.

Beanstalk is not the first decentralized platform to issue a public plea. After suffering an attack last year, BadgerDAO not only provided a direct line of communication to the attacker but also offered compensation.

Though Beanstalk suffered a substantial loss, it was nowhere near the amount drained in cryptocurrency from an attack against Axie Infinity last month, when a threat actor breached the Ronin bridge and stole more than $600 million. In February, Wormhole saw a $320 million deficit from an attack that was also attributed to an “exploit.” Prior to that, Crypto.com lost $15 million after an attack