Crypto Hacks of 2022 - Ronin, Wormhole, Nomad and the Year of Bridge Hacks

By Ryan S. · 2026, Oct 07

2022 set the record for crypto theft at the time. Chainalysis counts about $3.8B stolen, more than in any previous year of its data, and Immunefi about $3.77B in hacks alone. Two thirds of DeFi’s losses came from one kind of target: cross-chain bridges. Ronin lost about $625M in March, Wormhole about $326M in February, Nomad about $190M in August, the BNB Chain bridge minted about $570M of BNB in October, and Harmony’s bridge lost about $100M in June.

The year also brought the first large flash-loan governance attack (Beanstalk, ~$182M), the oracle manipulation of Mango Markets (~$115M), whose perpetrator was convicted in 2024 and then had all convictions vacated in 2025, and the ~$477M drain of FTX’s wallets on the day it filed for bankruptcy. This article reviews the year with the method of the site’s crypto-hacks series: statistics computed from the SlowMist Hacked database, the trackers’ annual figures, Rekt News, the analytics firms and official statements. The 2022 collapses (Terra, Celsius, FTX itself) and other frauds are kept out of the hack totals and covered separately. A companion article, The Technical Concepts Behind the 2022 Crypto Hacks, explains the mechanisms for Solidity developers.

This article has been made with the help of Claude Code and several custom skills

Scope, sources and caveats

The article covers incidents from 1 January to 31 December 2022. No Telegram export of the CryptoAlertHack channel was available for that year. The figures need five caveats:

Collapses and frauds are not hacks. The failures of Terra, Celsius, Three Arrows Capital, Voyager and the FTX exchange destroyed far more value than all the year’s hacks combined, but nobody broke into a system to cause them. They are listed in Frauds and collapses, and so are Vires Finance (~$530M, linked to fraud allegations against its founder) and the Ponzi schemes and rug pulls in SlowMist’s list.
The FTX hack is not the FTX collapse. On 11–12 November, hours after FTX filed for bankruptcy, about $477M was drained from its wallets. That theft is a hack and is counted; the exchange’s collapse is not.
SlowMist leaves out two large incidents. Wormhole and the BNB Chain bridge appear in the database without a stated loss, so its computed total misses them. SlowMist also values the FTX drain at ~$600M, against ~$477M elsewhere.
Nominal and realised losses differ. The BNB Chain attacker minted 2M BNB (~$570M) but moved only about $100M to $137M off the chain; Beanstalk lost ~$182M but its attacker kept ~$76M to ~$80M.
USD values are approximate, valued at the time of each report.

2022 in numbers

The annual figures

Source	Stolen (approx. USD)	Incidents	Notable split
Chainalysis	$3.8B	n/a	DeFi $3.1B (82.1%), 64% of it from bridges (~$2B); North Korea ~$1.7B
Immunefi	$3.77B hacks (+ $174.9M fraud)	134 hacks	DeFi 80.5%; $204.2M recovered (5.2%)
CertiK Hack3d	$3.7B (incl. scams)	n/a	Nine bridge incidents: 1.5% of incidents, more than a third of losses
SlowMist report	$3.78B	303	Bridges: 16 incidents, ~$1.21B; DeFi 183 incidents, ~$2.08B
PeckShield	~$3B by 31 October	n/a	October ~$760M gross across 44 exploits (post)

North Korea’s 2022 total has the widest range of any year. The UN Panel of Experts reported South Korea’s estimate of about $630M and a cybersecurity firm’s estimate of more than $1B, while Chainalysis attributes about $1.7B, including $1.1B from DeFi.

Month by month

PeckShield’s monthly posts for 2022 could not be recovered for this article, so the table compares CertiK, which counts hacks, exploits and scams, with SlowMist computed from the database without frauds. CertiK revised several months in successive reports; its monthly figures add up to about $3.51B against its annual $3.7B.

Month	CertiK	SlowMist hacks	SlowMist loss	Largest hack
January	~$179.3M	17	~$143.5M	Qubit, Crypto.com
February	~$414.3M	17	~$76.3M (Wormhole not priced)	Wormhole
March	~$715.9M	25	~$687.4M	Ronin
April	~$378.3M	23	~$301.2M	Beanstalk, Fei/Rari
May	~$99.6M	29	~$155.7M	Mirror Protocol
June	~$268.4M	27	~$226.6M	Harmony, Elrond
July	~$66.7M	18	~$19.5M	Audius
August	~$255.1M	20	~$225.1M	Nomad
September	~$181.9M	11	~$166.9M	Wintermute
October	~$290.1M	35	~$189.6M (BNB not priced)	BNB Chain, Mango
November	~$596.8M	13	~$644.9M (FTX at ~$600M)	FTX
December	~$62.2M	15	~$81.0M	Ankr/Helio

October shows how much definitions matter: Chainalysis calls it the worst month in its history (~$775.7M in 32 attacks), PeckShield counts ~$760M gross, and CertiK ~$290M, because only some trackers value the BNB Chain mint.

pie showData
    title SlowMist hack losses by month, 2022, frauds excluded (USD million)
    "January" : 143.47
    "February" : 76.32
    "March" : 687.37
    "April" : 301.18
    "May" : 155.68
    "June" : 226.63
    "July" : 19.50
    "August" : 225.05
    "September" : 166.93
    "October" : 189.64
    "November" : 644.91
    "December" : 80.97

The largest incidents

Rank	Date	Incident	Category	Reported loss (approx. USD)	Root cause (summary)
1	23 Mar	Ronin bridge	Cross-chain bridge	$540M to $625M	5 of 9 validator keys obtained, 4 through social engineering; Lazarus (FBI)
2	6 Oct	BNB Chain token hub	Cross-chain bridge	$570M minted, $100M to $137M moved out	Forged IAVL Merkle proof accepted
3	11 Nov	FTX (post-bankruptcy drain)	CEX	$477M	SIM swap of an employee’s phone number, per a DOJ indictment
4	2 Feb	Wormhole	Cross-chain bridge	$326M (replaced by Jump)	Signature verification spoofed through a deprecated function
5	1 Aug	Nomad	Cross-chain bridge	$190M	An upgrade made the zero root trusted; hundreds copied the exploit
6	17 Apr	Beanstalk	DeFi (stablecoin)	$182M	Flash-loaned voting power passed a malicious proposal instantly
7	20 Sep	Wintermute	Market maker	$160M	Vanity address generated with Profanity, key brute-forced
8	11 Oct	Mango Markets	DeFi (perpetuals)	$110M to $117M ($67M returned)	MNGO price pumped to borrow against unrealised profit
9	5 Jun	Elrond (Maiar)	L1	$113M (recovered, per Elrond)	Virtual-machine function let a contract act with the caller’s context
10	23 Jun	Harmony Horizon bridge	Cross-chain bridge	$100M	2 of 5 multisig keys compromised; Lazarus (FBI)
11	28 Jan	Qubit	Cross-chain bridge	$80M	Zero address treated as ETH in `deposit()`
12	30 Apr	Fei / Rari Fuse	DeFi lending	$80M	Reentrancy in `borrow()` through `exitMarket()`
13	23 Mar	Cashio	Stablecoin	$48M to $52M	Collateral accounts not validated; 2B CASH minted
14	17 Jan	Crypto.com	CEX	$34M (reimbursed)	Withdrawals approved without 2FA
15	1 Nov	Deribit	CEX	$28M	Hot wallets compromised

Statistics from the SlowMist database

Computed from the 2022 entries of the SlowMist Hacked database, before recoveries, after removing 63 frauds (scams, rug pulls and Vires Finance), which are not counted as hacks:

250 incidents, of which 129 have a stated loss, for ~$2.92B. Adding Wormhole (~$326M), which the database lists without an amount, would bring it to about $3.24B; SlowMist’s own report gives $3.78B.
Median loss: ~$2.0M, far higher than in later years: 2022’s incidents were fewer and larger. Eight incidents of $100M or more make up about 69% of the total.

Size band	Incidents	Loss (approx. USD)	Share of loss
≥ $100M	8	$2,019.0M	69.2%
$10M to $100M	23	$701.6M	24.0%
$1M to $10M	56	$188.0M	6.4%
$100k to $1M	29	$8.6M	0.3%
< $100k	13	$0.4M	< 0.1%
Not stated	121	n/a	n/a

Category	Incidents	Loss (approx. USD)	Share of loss
Other / unknown	62	$1,092.3M	37.4%
Key / infrastructure compromise	35	$857.7M	29.4%
Smart contract vulnerability	92	$696.8M	23.9%
Cross-chain bridge / sidechain	15	$202.6M	6.9%
Oracle / price manipulation	15	$41.5M	1.4%
Phishing / account takeover	30	$26.8M	0.9%

The category follows the database’s attack method. The bridge row looks small only because SlowMist files Ronin and Harmony as key leaks, leaves Wormhole and BNB Chain unpriced, and lists unusual labels under “Other / unknown” (FTX, Wintermute’s “operational mistake”, Elrond’s VM bug, Scream’s depeg-driven bad debt). By incident, bridges took about $1.2B to $2B in 2022, depending on the tracker.

timeline
    title Main hacks of 2022
    Q1 : Crypto.com (~$34M) : Qubit (~$80M) : Wormhole (~$326M) : Cashio (~$52M) : Ronin (~$625M)
    Q2 : Inverse (~$15.6M) : Beanstalk (~$182M) : Fei/Rari (~$80M) : LUNA oracle floor : Elrond : Harmony (~$100M)
    Q3 : Audius : Nomad (~$190M) : Slope wallets : Wintermute (~$160M)
    Q4 : Transit Swap : BNB Chain (~$570M minted) : Mango (~$115M) : Team Finance : Deribit : FTX drain (~$477M) : Ankr/Helio

The year of bridge hacks

Bridges were the defining target of 2022. A bridge holds the assets of one chain and mints their representation on another on the strength of a message, a signature set or a proof; whoever forges that message mints value. The site’s article on cross-chain bridge hacks analyses several of these incidents in depth; this section summarises them.

Ronin (~$540M to ~$625M, March)

Ronin, the sidechain of the game Axie Infinity, accepted withdrawals signed by 5 of its 9 validators. Four validators were run by Sky Mavis, the game’s developer, and a fifth, run by the Axie DAO, had allowlisted Sky Mavis to sign on its behalf during a load peak months earlier, an allowlist that was never revoked. The attackers obtained Sky Mavis’ keys through social engineering of an employee, used the stale allowlist for the fifth signature, and withdrew 173,600 ETH and 25.5M USDC on 23 March. Nobody noticed for six days (Ronin statement).

The FBI attributed the theft to the Lazarus Group on 14 April 2022, and the US Treasury sanctioned the receiving address the same day. About $30M was seized later in the year with Chainalysis’ help (Chainalysis). Elliptic valued the loss at $540M at the time of the theft; the $625M figure is its value at disclosure.

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    participant X as Lazarus
    participant SM as Sky Mavis (4 validators)
    participant AD as Axie DAO validator
    participant R as Ronin bridge (5 of 9)
    X->>SM: social engineering, 4 validator keys
    Note over AD: old allowlist lets Sky Mavis sign for the DAO
    X->>AD: 5th signature through the stale allowlist
    X->>R: withdrawals with 5 valid signatures
    R-->>X: 173,600 ETH and 25.5M USDC
    Note over R: unnoticed for six days

The other bridges

Date	Bridge	Loss (approx. USD)	What the bridge accepted
28 Jan	Qubit	$80M	`deposit()` treated the zero address as ETH, and a transfer from an address with no code succeeded silently, so unbacked tokens were minted
2 Feb	Wormhole	$326M (replaced by Jump)	Signature verification relied on a deprecated function that let the attacker supply a fake instruction account, so a forged message minted 120,000 wrapped ETH on Solana (Wormhole)
23 Jun	Harmony Horizon	$100M	Two of five multisig keys compromised; the FBI attributed it to Lazarus in January 2023
1 Aug	Nomad	$190M	An upgrade marked the zero root as trusted, so any message passed; after the first exploit, hundreds of addresses copied the transaction, and ~$32M to ~$37M came back from whitehats
6 Oct	BNB Chain token hub	$570M minted, ~$100M to ~$137M moved	A bug in IAVL Merkle proof verification accepted a forged proof against an old block; the chain was halted and most of the BNB stayed frozen

Each bridge failed differently, through keys (Ronin, Harmony), a signature check (Wormhole), an initialisation (Nomad), a proof verifier (BNB Chain) or a deposit edge case (Qubit), but the result was the same: the destination chain released or minted value that no deposit backed.

DeFi design failures

Beanstalk (~$182M, April): governance bought with a flash loan

Beanstalk, a stablecoin protocol, let holders of its governance stake vote on proposals and execute any proposal with a two-thirds supermajority immediately through emergencyCommit. The attacker took a flash loan of about $1B, deposited it into Beanstalk’s pools to obtain a supermajority of voting power for one transaction, and executed a proposal (BIP-18) that sent the protocol’s assets to itself, all before repaying the loan (Beanstalk). The protocol lost ~$182M; the attacker kept ~$76M to ~$80M after repaying the flash loan.

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    participant X as Attacker
    participant FL as Flash-loan lenders
    participant B as Beanstalk
    X->>FL: borrow ~$1B
    X->>B: deposit, receive voting power (supermajority)
    X->>B: emergencyCommit(BIP-18)
    B-->>X: protocol assets transferred
    X->>FL: repay, keep the difference

Voting power that can be acquired and used inside one transaction is not governance. Snapshots of voting power taken before a proposal, and a delay between approval and execution, prevent it.

Mango Markets (~$115M, October): an oracle and a court case

Avraham Eisenberg used two accounts to open a large perpetual position on the MNGO token, then pushed MNGO’s spot price up about tenfold on thin markets. Mango’s oracle valued his position’s unrealised profit at the new price, and he borrowed nearly all of the protocol’s assets against it. He then negotiated with the DAO, which voted to let him keep about $47M if he returned $67M. US prosecutors charged him with fraud and manipulation; he was convicted in April 2024, but a federal judge vacated all the convictions in May 2025 (TRM Labs). Whatever the legal outcome, the mechanism is a classic oracle manipulation.

Contract bugs

Date	Protocol	Loss (approx. USD)	Flaw
15 Mar	Agave, Hundred (Gnosis Chain)	$5.5M + $6.2M	A token’s `callAfterTransfer` hook allowed reentrancy into `borrow` before debt was updated
23 Mar	Cashio	$48M to $52M	Collateral account chain not validated; a fake chain minted 2B CASH
2 Apr	Inverse Finance	$15.6M	A thin, single-source TWAP was pumped to borrow against INV
13 Apr	Elephant Money	$11.2M to $22.2M	Flash-loan manipulation of the price used to mint TRUNK
28 Apr	Deus	$13.4M	A Solidly pool’s VWAP was moved with flash swaps
30 Apr	Fei / Rari Fuse	$80M	`borrow()` sent ETH before updating state; reentrancy through `exitMarket()`
30 Apr	Saddle Finance	$11M (+$3.8M rescued)	An outdated library mispriced LP tokens in metapool swaps
12 May	Venus, Blizz	$13.5M + $8.3M	Chainlink’s LUNA feed stopped at a $0.10 floor while LUNA traded far below it
23 Jul	Audius	~$6M nominal	Storage collision between the proxy and its initializer let the attacker re-initialise governance
2 Oct	Transit Swap	$21M (~70% returned)	Unvalidated input let `transferFrom` spend users’ approvals
27 Oct	Team Finance	$14.5M to $15.8M	`migrate()` moved locked liquidity into pools the attacker had priced
12 Dec	Lodestar	$6.5M	`donate()` inflated the price of plvGLP used as collateral

Many of these mechanisms recur in later years; the site’s technical article on 2024 explains approval drains and reentrancy, and the 2023 one oracle and accounting failures, in more depth.

Keys, operations and infrastructure

FTX drain (11–12 November, ~$477M). Hours after FTX filed for Chapter 11, its wallets were emptied. In early 2024, US prosecutors indicted three people for a SIM-swap scheme that took over an employee’s phone number and, through it, the company’s accounts; the indictment refers to the victim as “Company-1”. Elliptic traced the funds.
Wintermute (20 September, ~$160M). The market maker’s hot wallet had a vanity address generated with Profanity, a tool whose 32-bit seed made keys recoverable by brute force once 1inch disclosed the weakness five days earlier (Wintermute’s CEO). Wintermute had earlier lost 20M OP when an address it gave Optimism existed on Ethereum but not yet on Optimism, and an attacker deployed a contract to it first.
Elrond (5 June, ~$113M). A new virtual-machine function let a contract execute with its caller’s context; the attacker drained EGLD from the Maiar DEX. Elrond says the funds were recovered.
Exchanges. Crypto.com approved withdrawals without 2FA for 483 users (~$34M, reimbursed); Deribit lost ~$28M from hot wallets; LCX ~$7.9M from a hot-wallet key.
Keys and developers. Ankr says a former employee planted a malicious package and obtained the deployer key, minting a huge amount of aBNBc, which was then used to drain Helio (Ankr report); Raydium’s owner key was exposed by a trojan.
Wallet software. The Slope mobile wallet sent key material to a logging service, and 9,231 Solana wallets were drained (Solana); tampered BitKeep Android packages stole keys in December.

Frauds and collapses

Collapses and frauds are not hacks: no system was broken into. They are listed here and not counted in this article’s hack totals.

Collapses of 2022. Terra’s UST stablecoin and LUNA collapsed in May, wiping out tens of billions of dollars of value; Celsius froze withdrawals in June and filed for bankruptcy in July; Three Arrows Capital and Voyager failed in June and July; FTX filed for bankruptcy on 11 November, and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud in November 2023. These were failures of solvency and, in several cases, fraud by insiders.

Frauds in SlowMist’s list. SlowMist lists 63 frauds for 2022, about $822M in total. The largest:

Date	Scheme	Loss (approx. USD)	What happened
Apr	Vires Finance (Waves)	$530M	Outflows from the lending protocol linked by researchers to its founder, who faces fraud allegations he denies; filed by SlowMist under “Unknown” and treated here as a fraud
May	Mining Capital Coin	$62M	A crypto-mining investment scheme charged as fraud in the United States
Dec	mgnr	$52M	Rug pull
Nov	DeFiAI	$40M	Rug pull
Jul	TBIS	$21M	Scam
Jul	Raccoon Network, Freedom Protocol	$20M	Scam

Official post-mortems and statements

Incident	Source	What it says
Ronin	Statement on X	5 of 9 validator keys used; withdrawals forged on 23 March
Wormhole	Statement on X, Jump on X	Exploit confirmed; Jump replaced the 120,000 ETH
Nomad	Statement on X	Bridge exploited; recovery address for whitehats
BNB Chain	Ecosystem update	Forged proof on the token hub; chain halted and patched
Beanstalk	Governance exploit post-mortem	Flash-loaned votes passed BIP-18 through `emergencyCommit`
Wintermute	CEO statement on X	Profanity-generated hot wallet compromised; firm solvent
Harmony	Statement on X	Horizon bridge exploited
Ankr	After-action report	Former employee, malicious package, deployer key
Slope / Solana	Solana incident note	Key material sent to a logging service
Ronin, Harmony attribution	FBI statements (April 2022, January 2023)	Lazarus Group / APT38

Observations

Bridges were the year’s weakest link. Five of the ten largest hacks were bridges, and Chainalysis puts bridge losses at about $2B, two thirds of DeFi’s losses.
Bridges failed in five different ways: keys, signatures, initialisation, proof verification and deposit edge cases. A bridge has as many critical components as it has ways to accept a message.
North Korea specialised in bridges and keys, with official FBI attributions for Ronin and Harmony and estimates of its total between ~$630M and ~$1.7B.
Flash loans turned design flaws into nine-figure losses: Beanstalk’s governance and Mango’s oracle were both exploitable by anyone with enough capital for one transaction.
Key generation was a vulnerability of its own: Profanity’s weak seed cost Wintermute ~$160M.
The headline losses of 2022 were collapses, not hacks. Terra, Celsius and FTX destroyed far more than all the year’s hacks combined.

Data gaps

This section lists what could not be found or verified while writing this article, so that it can be completed later. Each row says what is missing and where to look first.

Gap	What is missing or unverified	Where to search
Telegram export	No CryptoAlertHack export was available for 2022.	A Telegram export for 2022
PeckShield figures	No full-year 2022 post found; monthly figures missing for January–September, November and December.	PeckShieldAlert posts on X, press archives (check the year)
CertiK figures	Annual phishing, flash-loan and oracle totals are behind a form; monthly figures sum to ~$3.51B against the annual ~$3.7B.	CertiK Hack3d 2022 PDF
TRM Labs and Elliptic	No TRM 2022 annual page and no Elliptic annual figure could be verified.	trmlabs.com, elliptic.co
SlowMist omissions	Wormhole and the BNB Chain bridge are listed without amounts; FTX is valued at ~$600M against ~$477M elsewhere.	SlowMist database entries
Official statements	Mango’s posts deleted; Elrond/MultiversX report (403), Audius post-mortem (404) and Crypto.com report (dead) not reachable; Qubit’s Medium report seen only in search; DOJ release on the FTX drain not found.	Wayback Machine, project websites
Outcomes not verified	Ronin user reimbursement, the Wormhole counter-exploit of 2023, Fei/Tribe reimbursement, Team Finance’s partial return and the return of ~17M OP were reported by research from memory and are not in the article.	Project statements, Rekt follow-ups
Smaller incidents	Superfluid, Crema, Nirvana, Fortress, Lympo, Pando, Moola and Acala are not covered or have no verified source.	Rekt News, SlowMist, project channels
Collapses	Legal outcomes for Terra (Do Kwon) and Celsius (Mashinsky) were not verified and are not stated.	US DOJ, court records

Conclusion

2022 set the record for crypto hacks at the time: about $3.8B stolen (Chainalysis), $3.7B to $3.8B across the other trackers.

Bridges lost about $2B: Ronin (~$625M), Wormhole (~$326M), Nomad (~$190M), Harmony (~$100M), and the BNB Chain mint (~$570M nominal).
DeFi design failures let flash-loan capital take governance (Beanstalk) or inflate an oracle (Mango).
Keys and operations failed at FTX (a SIM swap), Wintermute (a weak vanity key) and Crypto.com (missing 2FA).
North Korea was the largest single actor, with FBI attributions for Ronin and Harmony.
Collapses and frauds (Terra, Celsius, FTX, Vires Finance) are kept apart from the hack totals.

Mindmap of the 2022 crypto hacks covering the tracker figures, the bridge hacks, DeFi design failures, key and operational failures, and frauds and collapses excluded from the totals

Annex

Key Terms

Term	Definition
Cross-chain bridge	A system that locks or burns assets on one chain and releases or mints their representation on another, on the strength of a message, signatures or a proof.
Validator threshold	The number of bridge validators that must sign a withdrawal; Ronin required 5 of 9.
Allowlist	A permission letting one party sign or act for another; Ronin’s was never revoked.
Merkle proof	A proof that an item belongs to a committed tree; BNB Chain’s IAVL proof verifier accepted a forged one.
Zero root	An uninitialised Merkle root; Nomad’s upgrade marked it as trusted, so every message was valid.
Signature verification	Checking that a message was signed by the expected parties; Wormhole’s check could be spoofed.
Flash loan	An uncollateralised loan repaid within one transaction, used for Beanstalk’s voting power and many price manipulations.
Governance attack	Using acquired or borrowed voting power to pass a proposal that transfers assets.
emergencyCommit	Beanstalk’s function executing a proposal immediately with a supermajority.
Oracle manipulation	Moving the price a protocol reads so that collateral or profit is overvalued, as at Mango.
Perpetual future	A derivative with no expiry; Mango valued unrealised profit on perpetuals as collateral.
Vanity address	An address with a chosen pattern; Profanity generated them from a 32-bit seed, making keys recoverable.
SIM swap	Taking over a phone number to intercept codes and reset accounts, used in the FTX drain per the DOJ.
Hot wallet	An exchange wallet whose keys are online, as at Deribit and LCX.
Collapse	The failure of a project or company through insolvency or fraud, without a break-in; not counted as a hack.
Nominal vs realised loss	The paper value of what was taken or minted, against what the attacker could actually withdraw.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How much was stolen in crypto hacks in 2022?

About $3.8B according to Chainalysis, a record at the time. Immunefi counts ~$3.77B in hacks, CertiK ~$3.7B including scams, and SlowMist’s report $3.78B. The database-derived figure in this article, ~$2.92B, is lower because SlowMist lists Wormhole and the BNB Chain bridge without amounts and because frauds are excluded.

Q: Why were bridges hacked so often in 2022?

A bridge mints or releases assets on one chain when it believes a deposit happened on another, so whoever can make it believe a false message can create value. In 2022 that belief was produced in five ways:

Keys: Ronin (5 of 9) and Harmony (2 of 5).
Signature checks: Wormhole.
Initialisation: Nomad’s trusted zero root.
Proof verification: BNB Chain’s IAVL proofs.
Deposit edge cases: Qubit’s zero address.

Q: How did a flash loan let an attacker take over Beanstalk’s governance?

Beanstalk granted voting power on deposit and allowed a two-thirds supermajority to execute a proposal immediately. With a ~$1B flash loan, the attacker held that supermajority for a single transaction, executed a proposal sending the protocol’s assets to itself, and repaid the loan before the transaction ended.

Q: Was the Mango Markets exploit a crime?

Prosecutors argued it was, and a jury convicted Avraham Eisenberg in April 2024, but a federal judge vacated all the convictions in May 2025. The technical mechanism is not in dispute: he inflated MNGO’s price on thin markets so that Mango’s oracle overvalued his position, and borrowed the protocol’s assets against it.

Q: Why are Terra, Celsius and the FTX collapse not in the hack totals, while the FTX drain is?

The collapses were failures of solvency, and in some cases fraud by insiders; no attacker broke into a system to cause them. The FTX drain, by contrast, was a theft of about $477M from FTX’s wallets by outsiders, which US prosecutors attributed to a SIM-swap scheme. Mixing the two would make 2022’s hack total meaningless.

Q: Combining Ronin and Wintermute, what do they say about key management?

Neither involved a code bug:

Ronin had a 5-of-9 threshold, but four keys belonged to one company and the fifth could be borrowed through a stale allowlist, so one compromise was enough.
Wintermute used a vanity-address generator whose keys came from a 32-bit seed, so anyone willing to brute-force it could recover the key once the weakness was public.

In both cases the cryptography of the signature was sound; what failed was who held the keys and how they were created.

References

Annual reports and figures

Official statements and post-mortems

Analytics firms

Databases and Rekt News post-mortems

Feel free to contact me on

# hack # exploit # security # defi # bridge # oracle # post-mortem # cross-chain # supply-chain

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