Share this article
DeFi Protocol Pickle Finance Token Loses Almost Half Its Value After $19.7M Hack
Popular decentralized finance protocol Pickle Finance was hacked on Saturday, draining $19.7 million in DAI.
Updated Sep 14, 2021, 10:33 a.m. Published Nov 22, 2020, 4:28 p.m.
Make us preferred on Google
Popular decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Pickle Finance was hacked on Saturday, draining $19.7 million in DAI, a decentralized stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, from a Pickle wallet.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
- “There are reports that our DAI PickleJar strategy has been exploited. We are actively looking into this matter and will provide further updates,” the Pickle Finance team announced on their official Twitter account.
- The price of Pickle's native token (PICKLE) fell 50.12% to $10.17 on the news, according to Messari data. It has since rebounded to around $12.60.
Pickle came on the scene Sept. 11 as one of many food-themed DeFi projects. The fully automated system rewards users with interest payments and token disbursements in PICKLE, ether and stablecoin pairings for providing liquidity to several stablecoin pools.
- The project attempted to bring price stability to the four top stablecoins, DAI, USDC, USDT and sUSD, which are frequently knocked off their dollar peg.
- Pickle’s pJars, similar to yearn.finance’s vaults, found and executed arbitrage opportunities between stablecoin deposits on several protocols, nominally to push these stablecoins towards their peg, but also to reward Pickle users.
On Friday, the team introduced the cDAI jar, a “new strategy” aimed at maximizing returns from DAI deposited on the decentralized lending protocol Compound. The Pickle team, and a group of "white hat hackers" have traced the 19,759,355 DAI weekend exploit to this smart contract, according to a blog post.
- "This was a very complicated attack and involved many components of the Pickle protocol. As of right now, it does not seem that any other funds are at risk," they said. "While we work on the fix to remove the attack vector, the white hat group has decided that we should not publish any details of the actual attack yet."
- A fix was estimated by Sunday at 15:00 UTC.
“We’re encouraging all LPs to withdraw their funds from the Jars until the issues have been resolved,” the Pickle team tweeted.
More For You
KuCoin captured a record share of centralised exchange volume in 2025, with more than $1.25tn traded as its volumes grew faster than the wider crypto market.
What to know:
- KuCoin recorded over $1.25 trillion in total trading volume in 2025, equivalent to an average of roughly $114 billion per month, marking its strongest year on record.
- This performance translated into an all-time high share of centralised exchange volume, as KuCoin’s activity expanded faster than aggregate CEX volumes, which slowed during periods of lower market volatility.
- Spot and derivatives volumes were evenly split, each exceeding $500 billion for the year, signalling broad-based usage rather than reliance on a single product line.
- Altcoins accounted for the majority of trading activity, reinforcing KuCoin’s role as a primary liquidity venue beyond BTC and ETH at a time when majors saw more muted turnover.
- Even as overall crypto volumes softened mid-year, KuCoin maintained elevated baseline activity, indicating structurally higher user engagement rather than short-lived volume spikes.
More For You
Fed rates decision, Tesla earnings, Bybit roadmap: Crypto Week Ahead
Your look at what's coming in the week starting Jan. 26.
What to know:
You are reading Crypto Week Ahead: a comprehensive list of what's coming up in the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain in the coming days, as well as the major macroeconomic events that will influence digital asset markets. For an updated daily email reminder of what's expected, click here to sign up for Crypto Daybook Americas. You won't want to start your day without it.
Top Stories
