Thena's native token, THE, has continued its sharp decline, falling more than 44% from $0.27 to $0.15 in the days following a $3.7 million price manipulation attack linked to the Venus Protocol lending market on the BNB Chain. The exploit, which occurred on March 15, has triggered a crisis of confidence, leading to sustained selling pressure and a more than 51% drop in THE's trading volume.
The attack mechanics involved an attacker using 7,447 ETH sourced from Tornado Cash to execute a flash loan. The perpetrator accumulated 14.5 million THE tokens, controlling 84% of the supply cap for THE's lending market on Venus. By artificially inflating THE's price as collateral, the attacker was able to extract approximately $14.9 million in assets, including BNB, CAKE, and BTCB, from Venus's lending pools. This left Venus Protocol with an estimated $2.15 million in bad debt.
Thena has denied direct responsibility for the exploit, asserting that the vulnerability existed within Venus Protocol's supply cap configuration, not in Thena's own smart contracts or decentralized exchange infrastructure. Despite this technical distinction, THE holders have borne the brunt of the fallout, with the token's price cratering in the aftermath.
In response to the liquidity crisis and capital outflows, Thena activated emergency measures, announcing a drastic increase in Annual Percentage Rates (APR) across its liquidity pools, particularly for Single Sided Vaults. The move is designed to incentivize liquidity providers to stay, using commissions generated during the attack's peak volatility to fund the higher yields. However, the strategy has so far failed to reverse the selling pressure, as security concerns appear to outweigh the additional rewards for many participants.
Meanwhile, Venus Protocol's governance token, XVS, has shown resilience, increasing by 12% over the past week, suggesting investors view the incident as an isolated failure of a specific lending market rather than a systemic issue. Venus has absorbed the losses and is reviewing its supply cap parameters, a move that could have lasting implications for THE's utility as a DeFi collateral asset.
The incident highlights broader concerns about risk transmission across interconnected DeFi protocols and the vulnerability of low-liquidity tokens used as collateral. Analysts note that even if Thena's contracts were not directly breached, the protocol's governance and liquidity design contributed to conditions that made the price manipulation feasible. Thena now faces a significant credibility gap, and market sentiment is unlikely to recover without a comprehensive post-mortem and verifiable safeguards to prevent future incidents.
