DeFi Protocol MakinaFi Hit by $4M Exploit Amid MEV Frontrunning

MakinaFi reportedly suffered a security breach resulting in the theft of 1,299 ETH, valued at approximately $4.13 million The incident was disclosed by PeckShieldAlert in a post on X, which traced the movement of the stolen funds shortly after the attack.

Exploit Details and On-Chain Trail

According to the on-chain data, the stolen ETH was routed into two Ethereum addresses following the exploit. One address, 0xbed2…dE25, was labeled as holding approximately $3.3 million of the funds, while a second address, 0xE573…f905, was identified as holding around $880,000. On-chain data from Etherscan shows that at least one funding flow to these addresses involved an entity tagged as an MEV Builder (0xa6c2…). PeckShieldAlert also noted that some transactions were preemptively processed by the MEV builder, indicating the exploit involved time-sensitive execution and transaction ordering.

#PeckShieldAlert @makinafi has been exploited for ~1,299 $ETH (~$4.13M).

The hacker was frontrun by MEV Builder (0xa6c2…).

The stolen funds are currently held in 2 addresses:
0xbed2…dE25 ($3.3M) & 0x573d…910e ($880K) pic.twitter.com/Q5WzHpfq7j

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) January 20, 2026

What on-chain trackers are monitoring

Market participants are monitoring whether the attacker consolidates the stolen ETH into fewer wallets or transfers the funds to mixers or centralized exchanges. On-chain labels linking part of the transaction flow to an MEV builder suggest the exploit may have relied on builder-side execution rather than manual transactions. At the time of writing, MakinaFi had not published a detailed technical breakdown or mitigation update regarding the exploit.