220 million dollars went up in smoke. From November 3, 2025, around 7:48 AM UTC, until November 4 in the late morning, decentralized finance (DeFi) went through one of the darkest periods in its history. In the span of 48 hours, three major incidents affecting Balancer, Moonwell, and Stream Finance led to estimated cumulative losses of over 220 million dollars, sowing panic and amplifying the volatility of the crypto market.
128 million hit the wall
It all started on November 3 at 7:48 AM UTC. Balancer, a pillar of DeFi with its automated pools, suffered an exploit on its V2 Composable Stable Pools.
The attack exploited a precision flaw in the EXACT_OUT swaps (rounding error in the upscale function), allowing more than $128 million to be drained across Ethereum, Polygon, Base, and other chains. Forks like Beethoven X (Beets) and BEX were affected, with emergency pause pools left vulnerable.
The Balancer team, in collaboration with security researchers, has identified the vulnerability as isolated to V2 (V3 intact). A complete post-mortem is underway, and the DAO is offering a 20% (~$25M) bounty to the hacker for restitution, under threat of legal actions and on-chain. Berachain has announced a full recovery of frozen funds.
Despite 11 past audits, this sixth breach in 5 years highlights recurring weaknesses in legacy contracts.
Markets have plunged: DeFi tokens down 10-30%, and confidence has wavered, with preventive freezes across several ecosystems.
