A common occurrence in cryptocurrency is attempting to exchange 50 million $USDT → $AAVE on the decentralized finance platform Aave, resulting in a significant loss.

According to Aave founder Stani Kulechov, the demand from the large trader triggered a warning about severe price slippage, and it was necessary to manually confirm the operation before execution. However, the transaction was executed on a mobile device. The result? The trader received only 324 AAVE tokens, with an approximate market value of $36,100, which equates to a loss of nearly $49.96 million.

Aave engineer Martin Grabina explained that the main issue was not just slippage but the substantial impact of the trade on the price. The previous offer indicated that 50 million USDT would yield less than 140 AAVE before fees, making the trade unfavorable from the start.

Kulechov noted that the trade was executed via $COW Swap, and the system functioned as designed, with the user clearly accepting the risks. The team plans to communicate with the trader to return about $600,000 of the transaction fees.

This incident serves as a clear reminder: executing very large trades on decentralized exchanges without breaking them up can lead to significant losses due to limited liquidity and substantial price impact.