Saddle Finance

On April 30, 2022, Saddle Finance, a decentralized exchange (DEX) specializing in stablecoin and pegged asset trading, was hacked, resulting in a net loss of $11 million in assets, as reported by Crypto Briefing.

The attack, detected at 07:40 UTC, involved a flash loan exploit that initially drained $14.8 million, with funds funneled through Tornado Cash to obscure the trail, per Twitter user @web3isgreat. Saddle, an automated market maker on Ethereum with $20 million in total value locked per DefiLlama, was alerted by BlockSec’s monitoring system shortly after the exploit began.

Within 20 minutes, Saddle paused metapool withdrawals and tweeted about investigating a “possible exploit,” per Twitter (@SaddleFinance). BlockSec recovered $3.8 million, leaving $11 million unrecovered, with little chance of retrieval due to Tornado Cash mixing, as noted by Crypto Briefing.

The hacker’s identity remained unknown, and no arrests were reported in 2022’s regulatory environment. One of 295 DeFi hacks in 2022, costing $3.1 billion, per Chainalysis, the incident, following Meter.io’s $4.4 million and Axie Infinity’s $625 million losses, underscored the rising threat to DeFi.

Twitter’s @BlockSecTeam emphasized real-time monitoring’s role, fueling calls for flash loan safeguards, robust smart contract audits, and enhanced blockchain analytics to secure DeFi platforms.