Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Venus has acknowledged being impacted by a problem with one of its price feed oracles, leading to unauthorized borrows of approximately $270,000 on December 11. However, Venus has refrained from labeling the incident as an exploit, as some analysts have, and has committed to replenishing the affected funds from its treasury.
The issue first came to light on December 10, with reports indicating that a malfunctioning price oracle disrupted operations on the Binance Smart Chain-based DeFi lending and borrowing marketplace. A user on X (previously known as Twitter), SaulCapital, brought attention to the matter, noting that the “isolated pool on Venus Protocol for liquid staked BNB got exploited.” SaulCapital also shared a link to a wallet address suspected of involvement in the incident, which contained nearly $260,000 at the time.
Responding to these concerns, Venus Protocol ambassador NoOneVII clarified that the issue seemed to stem from an “Oracle price issue, occurring in a small Isolated Market.” He assured that the Venus Core Pool and other pools were separate and unaffected, emphasizing on the Venus Protocol Telegram channel that the platform’s security was not compromised.
Brad, the Head of Venus Labs, further confirmed that the Binance oracle, responsible for supporting the snBNB asset in the isolated pool, had reported an incorrect price, resulting in unauthorized borrows of around $200,000.
On December 11, Venus Protocol announced plans to provide more details soon, reassuring users that “The $snBNB price feed is back to normal, Core Pool and other markets are unaffected. Funds are SAFU (Safe and Funds Unaffected).” The protocol also mentioned that it would propose to “immediately inject liquidity from the treasury to the affected pool totaling around $274K,” while efforts are made to recover the funds with the assistance of partners.
Despite this incident, the total value locked (TVL) in the Venus DeFi protocol, which was launched in 2020, seems to have remained stable at $738 million, as per DefiLlama’s data.
However, the platform’s native token, Venus (XVS), has experienced a 17.5% decline over the past 24 hours, trading at $9.56 at the time of reporting. This drop is in line with a broader downturn in the cryptocurrency market.
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