The decentralized finance (DeFi) community is buzzing after an unidentified wallet stole $50.4 million $USDT for just $36,000 $AAVE tokens.
Etherscan data shows that the wallet received 50.4 million $USDT from Binance 20 days ago. About two hours ago, the user deposited the stablecoins on Aave, DeFi’s largest lending protocol, and attempted to trade his position for $AAVE tokens.
Etherscan transactions
Transaction logs show that the user placed an order through the CoW protocol, which is integrated into the Aave interface, to exchange approximately 50.43 million aEthUSDT for aEthAAVE. A CoW solver picked up the order and executed it via this route:
- aEthUSDT to $USDT: The solver burned 50.43 million aEthUSDT via Aave V3 and withdrew 50.43 million $USDT.
- $USDT to WETH via Uniswap V3: 50.43 million $USDT went to the Uniswap V3 $USDT/WETH pool and ended up with 17,958 WETH. At $2,050/ETH, $50.4 million should yield approximately 24,600 WETH. That’s about $13.6 million lost due to slippage on the Uniswap move alone.
- KNOW to $AAVE via SushiSwap: This is where things get catastrophic. The Sushi Swap $AAVE/WETH pool currently only has about $73,000 in total liquidity. The solver pushed 17,958 WETH through this small pool and got back only 331 $AAVEworth $36,400. That’s actually a 99.9% slippage.
- $AAVE to aEthAAVE via Aave deposit: 331 $AAVE was deposited back into Aave V3, minting 327 aEthAAVE, which was delivered to the merchant.
Aave founder Stani Kulechov said the user confirmed the transaction despite being warned of “extraordinary slippages” by the Aave interface.
“We sympathize with the user and will attempt to reach out to the user, and we will refund $600,000 in fees collected for the transaction,” he added.