Share this article
DeFi Platform Acala’s Stablecoin Falls 99% After Hackers Issue 1.3B Tokens
A bug in the protocol’s newly deployed iBTC-aUSD liquidity pool left the door wide open for hackers to exploit.
Updated May 11, 2023, 6:42 p.m. Published Aug 15, 2022, 8:52 a.m.
Polkadot-based decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Acala’s native stablecoin, aUSD, depegged on Sunday, plummeting 99% after hackers exploited a bug in a newly deployed liquidity pool to mint 1.28 billion tokens.
- Acala developers said the bug was caused by a misconfiguration of the iBTC/aUSD liquidity pool shortly after it went live on Sunday. A liquidity pool is a digital pile of cryptocurrency locked in a smart contract, which results in creating liquidity for faster transactions on decentralized exchanges (DEX) and DeFi protocols.
- After noticing the exploit, the Acala team disabled the transfer functionality of the “erroneously minted aUSD” remaining on the Acala parachain. Parachains refer to custom, project-specific blockchains that are integrated within the Polkadot and Kusama networks and can be customized for any number of use cases.
- A wallet believed to belong to the attacker still contains approximately 1.27 billion aUSD. Acala has asked white-hat hackers to return the stolen funds to Polkadot or Moonbeam addresses.
- On-chain sleuths have pointed out that the attacker who minted 1.28 billion aUSD was not the only person to take advantage of the bug – several other users allegedly stole thousands of dollars worth of DOT from the liquidity pool.
- The Twitter account @alice_und_bob estimated that the "damage" was $0 to $10 million, "likely around 1.6M USD with chance of recovery."
- Launched earlier this year, aUSD successfully held its soft peg to the U.S. dollar until the hack. After the attack, the price of aUSD plunged from roughly $1.03 per token to $0.009.
- Acala developers said Sunday night that would continue to trace the on-chain activity to resolve the error mint of aUSD and try to restore aUSD peg.
- Later on Monday, Acala community members created a proposal that would result in the return of all erroneously minted aUSD to the protocol and the tokens later being burnt.
- Acala did not return requests for comments at press time.
Read more: Acala, VCs Commit $250M for Polkadot DeFi Investments
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Read more: Polkadot-Based Acala Raises $7M as DeFi Grabs Land on Another Blockchain
UPDATE (Aug. 15, 07:41 UTC): Adds clarifying information throughout.
UPDATE (Aug. 15, 13:10 UTC): Adds details about the community proposal in the seventh bullet.
UPDATE (Aug. 15, 13:10 UTC): Adds estimate of damage from Twitter user @alice_und_bob.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
NFT Project Pudgy Penguins Takes Over Las Vegas Sphere in Holiday Campaign
The NFT brand’s animated segments will air on the Sphere across Christmas week, signaling the crypto company's move into real-world consumer markets.
What to know:
- Pudgy Penguins will run an ad campaign at the Las Vegas Sphere during Christmas week, one of the few crypto brands to secure a spot at the high-profile venue.
- The NFT project, which launched on Ethereum in 2021, has expanded into physical toys and digital gaming as part of a broader consumer push.
- Pudgy Penguins briefly overtook Bored Apes in floor price earlier this year and recently launched its PENGU token on Solana, now trading on major exchanges.
Top Stories
