In November 2025, the Balancer decentralized finance protocol was exploited, resulting in the theft of over $110 million in assets. The attacker used a method involving thousands of tiny swaps that caused minimal value leakage per transaction, accumulating significant losses while remaining undetected for hours or days.
Balancer Labs and security teams quickly shifted to recovery mode, successfully reclaiming $4.1 million through coordinated actions like freezing liquidity venues. StakeWise intervened to recover 19.3 million osETH, and platforms such as Stader Polygon temporarily paused MaticX unstaking to block the attacker's exit routes, resuming operations only after recovery progress.
Fernando Martinelli, Co-Founder & CEO of Balancer Labs, stated, “A vulnerability attack that may affect the Balancer v2 pool has been discovered. Its engineering and security teams are investigating this incident as a high priority and will share verified updates and follow-up actions as more information becomes available.”
The exploiter counter-responded by moving funds, with on-chain analysts observing test transfers and the relocation of 6,999 ETH to new destinations in an attempt to cash out. Balancer's Total Value Locked (TVL) dropped from over $750 million to below $650 million, prompting withdrawals and calls for enhanced security across DeFi.
This incident is part of a broader trend in 2025, with other major hacks like the $260 million Cetus Protocol exploit and the $1.4 billion Bybit breach, emphasizing the real-time battle between attackers and defenders in crypto security.
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