Curve Finance (Vyper exploit)
A July 30, 2023 incident in which a compiler bug in older Vyper versions broke reentrancy protection, letting attackers drain several Curve pools and dependent protocols (Alchemix, JPEG'd, Metronome). Gross losses were ~$70M; white-hats and returns cut net losses to about $52M.
Also known as: Curve Finance, Vyper, CRV, Alchemix, JPEG'd
Summary
On July 30, 2023, attackers exploited a vulnerability not in Curve's own logic but in the Vyper smart-contract compiler: versions 0.2.15, 0.2.16, and 0.3.0 had a bug that disabled reentrancy protection. This allowed reentrancy attacks against several Curve stable/ETH pools and protocols that depended on them, including Alchemix, JPEG'd, and Metronome. [1][2]
Scale and recovery
Gross losses were estimated around $70 million across the affected pools. A significant share was recovered: white-hat actors (notably "c0ffeebabe.eth") front-ran or counter-exploited some pools and returned funds, and several attackers returned funds after Curve offered a 10% bounty. Net losses settled around $52 million, and the Curve DAO later voted to compensate affected liquidity providers. [1][2]
Bracketed numbers refer to the numbered sources listed below.
Sources (2)
See also
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) — Justin Sun token freezeProjectsWLFI, a DeFi project linked to Donald Trump and his family, blacklisted/froze the wallet of major investor Justin Sun in Sept 2025 — ~540–595M unlocked WLFI tokens (~$107M) plus ~2.4B locked. Sun sued, alleging an undisclosed admin 'blacklist backdoor'; WLFI denied it and threatened a countersuit. The dispute is ongoing.
Gala Games exploitTokensOn May 20, 2024 an attacker abused a privileged minter account on the GALA token contract to mint 5 billion GALA (≈$200M+ nominal) and dumped ~600M of them for ~$22M of ETH before Gala froze the address. Gala Games called it an internal access-control failure; the attacker later returned the ~$22M.
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