The recent Euler hack has raised concerns about the security of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platforms and their “money legos” promise. This hack has highlighted the vulnerability of smart contracts and the potential risks for the entire DeFi ecosystem. As a result, investors are becoming more cautious about putting their money into DeFi assets, and developers are stepping up their efforts to improve security measures. In this regard, the impact of the Euler hack on DeFi’s promise of being a safe and reliable alternative to traditional finance remains a topic of discussion in the blockchain community.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) took a hit this past week when Euler Finance was drained of nearly $200 million via six flash loans and a vulnerability. This was a significant blow to the sector as Euler Finance had been seen as the next big building block after Compound and Aave. Euler had also created isolated lending pools to help silo collateral damage, but now, the whole ship has sunk.
The irony is that the ability to clip and connect various liquidity pools and lending platforms throughout the ecosystem was one of the key pillars of DeFi. Composability, the developers called it, while meme gurus yelled, “Money legos.” The Tuesday event revealed precisely how risks can snowball into pandemonium.
Many were blindsided by the hack, with Euler undergoing six different audits from leading software auditing firms. There was an assumption that if it had passed so many audits, it must be safe. However, it initially appeared that several changes made to the underlying smart contracts were not audited, which led to the protocol’s vulnerability. It’s clearly a messy process for the auditing group in question, and many in the industry are still waiting for a standard security process.
Although it was one of the biggest losses in DeFi, it’s not over yet for the money lego narrative, said OpenZeppelin’s Gonzale. “It’s only another reminder as to why security is difficult and monitoring is important,” he added. Projects should be actively combining audits and going heavy on the bug bounties, “which will end up being cheaper for a company/protocol/project that needs to have their smart contracts checked,” according to Officer’s Notes, an anon Twitter account that tracks hacks and opsec in the crypto world.
DeFi survived the banking chaos, as Circle struggled with $3.3 billion locked up in a sinking bank. The market cap for Maker’s DAI was one big winner in all of this, as its backing is primarily made up of USDC, and each of these stablecoins served up relatively safe decentralized alternatives when SVB hit the fan. Platforms that offered the best deals on broken stablecoins also hit new record volumes, earning their liquidity providers a pretty penny in the process.
In the end, it was not a win for DeFi. But it’s still here, and clearly, traders still need it. For now, perhaps that’s enough.