Trader Loses $50m In AAVE Swap

A trader using the swap interface on the Aave front-end suffered a $50 million loss after accepting a swap with 99% slippage.

A trader using the swap interface on the Aave front-end suffered a $50 million loss after accepting a swap with 99% slippage. The trader sent $50.43 million in USDT through the Aave swap widget powered by CoW Swap and received 327 AAVE tokens, worth just $36,000. The transaction was routed through two low-liquidity pools. Aave founder Stani Kulechov confirmed that the Aave interface had displayed an extraordinary slippage warning before the trade was submitted by the user on a mobile device. He also said that Aave Labs would return the $600,000 in fees collected from the transaction. CoW Swap stated there’s no indication of a protocol exploit. Although it’s unclear why the CoW Swap solver didn’t use the optimal swap route. According to Arkham analyst Emmett Gallic, an MEV bot paid block builder Titan Builder 16,927 ETH, worth $34.8 million, as a bundle priority fee for transaction inclusion, while the MEV bot operator kept about $10 million. The DEX aggregator LlamaSwap protects users from extreme slippage by automatically disabling the trade button when such a swap would execute. A prior version of Aave’s swap widget also included a slippage hard limit.

Ethereum core developers have rejected both the SSZ execution blocks (EIP-7807) and the LUCID Encrypted Mempool as execution layer headliners for the Hegota upgrade, the next network fork following Glamsterdam. LUCID can be considered for the I-Star fork, slated for 2027. Client teams were unable to reach consensus on Frame Transactions (EIP-8141), an account abstraction proposal that introduces a new transaction type enabling features like social recovery and native gas sponsorship. Support for making Frame Transactions the headliner came from Vitalik Buterin, the Geth team, and Erigon. The Besu and Reth teams favored proceeding with no execution layer headliner, while the Nethermind team remained split on the issue. The headliner decision has been delayed, to be revisited in future calls.

BlackRock’s iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF, known under the ticker ETHB on Nasdaq, is now live as one of the first U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs that incorporates staking. ETHB brings higher returns for shareholders while contributing to the economic security of the Ethereum network. Early trading for ETHB showed volumes around $15 million. The launch follows the successful iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA), which began trading in July 2024 and currently holds over 3.1 million ETH.

• ACDE #232 highlights | minutes

• Lighthouse v8.1.2 release

• ZisK v0.16 release

• Base App changes 

• STRK20s Technical Paper 

• Yearn introduces yvUSD

• Etherscan address poisoning

• Grvt announces GRVT token

• Lido new earn vaults

• CFTC on prediction markets

Content is for informational purposes only, not endorsement or investment advice. The accuracy of information is not guaranteed.

A trader using the swap interface on the Aave front-end suffered a $50 million loss after accepting a swap with 99% slippage. The trader sent $50.43 million in USDT through the Aave swap widget powered by CoW Swap and received 327 AAVE tokens, worth just $36,000. The transaction was routed through two low-liquidity pools. Aave founder Stani Kulechov confirmed that the Aave interface had displayed an extraordinary slippage warning before the trade was submitted by the user on a mobile device. He also said that Aave Labs would return the $600,000 in fees collected from the transaction. CoW Swap stated there’s no indication of a protocol exploit. Although it’s unclear why the CoW Swap solver didn’t use the optimal swap route. According to Arkham analyst Emmett Gallic, an MEV bot paid block builder Titan Builder 16,927 ETH, worth $34.8 million, as a bundle priority fee for transaction inclusion, while the MEV bot operator kept about $10 million. The DEX aggregator LlamaSwap protects users from extreme slippage by automatically disabling the trade button when such a swap would execute. A prior version of Aave’s swap widget also included a slippage hard limit.

Ethereum core developers have rejected both the SSZ execution blocks (EIP-7807) and the LUCID Encrypted Mempool as execution layer headliners for the Hegota upgrade, the next network fork following Glamsterdam. LUCID can be considered for the I-Star fork, slated for 2027. Client teams were unable to reach consensus on Frame Transactions (EIP-8141), an account abstraction proposal that introduces a new transaction type enabling features like social recovery and native gas sponsorship. Support for making Frame Transactions the headliner came from Vitalik Buterin, the Geth team, and Erigon. The Besu and Reth teams favored proceeding with no execution layer headliner, while the Nethermind team remained split on the issue. The headliner decision has been delayed, to be revisited in future calls.

BlackRock’s iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF, known under the ticker ETHB on Nasdaq, is now live as one of the first U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs that incorporates staking. ETHB brings higher returns for shareholders while contributing to the economic security of the Ethereum network. Early trading for ETHB showed volumes around $15 million. The launch follows the successful iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA), which began trading in July 2024 and currently holds over 3.1 million ETH.

• ACDE #232 highlights | minutes

• Lighthouse v8.1.2 release

• ZisK v0.16 release

• Base App changes 

• STRK20s Technical Paper 

• Yearn introduces yvUSD

• Etherscan address poisoning

• Grvt announces GRVT token

• Lido new earn vaults

• CFTC on prediction markets

Content is for informational purposes only, not endorsement or investment advice. The accuracy of information is not guaranteed.

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