The decentralized protocol Balancer has started the month of November on a rather unfortunate note. The protocol fell victim to an exploit on November 3, 2025, resulting in a significant loss of around $128.64 million in a hack. Attackers targeted its V2 liquidity pools using the flash loan re-entrancy exploit.
On-chain security firm PeckShield reports that, following the development, the hackers remain active, transferring stolen funds to new wallets.
Hacker Increases Loot to 128 Million
The attackers began by exploiting vulnerabilities in Ethereum mainnet pools. They borrowed flash loans to withdraw money before the balances could be updated repeatedly. One transaction drained $70.6 million in wrapped assets. The method spread rapidly to layer-2 networks. For example, the Beets protocol on Sonic lost $3.4 million, and Base network pools lost $3.9 million.
Arbitrum followed, reporting losses amounting to $5.9 million. Polygon faced more minor losses of $117,000, while Beethoven X on Optimism lost $283,000. The hackers used custom contracts to gather stolen tokens, and wallets linked to the attack now hold various ERC-20 assets.
A shared codebase enabled rapid attacks on these multiple networks, putting over 27 Balancer forks at risk. Analysis of transactions reveals that attackers are attempting to transfer funds to other networks. However, V3 pools with osETH-aETH are secure. Security firm PeckShield reports that the breach is ongoing, with losses increasing from $70 million to approximately $128.64 million as of the time of writing.
Not a First Time
Although the Balancer team has not yet issued an official statement on X, many online security experts have alerted users, urging them to exercise caution. Balancer, like some major Defi protocols, has faced several security issues in the past, resulting in losses of over $1.6 million.
For example, a similar incident occurred on June 29, 2020, when an attacker exploited weaknesses in the management of deflationary tokens by using a flash loan from dYdX. This resulted in a loss of $500,000 in Ethereum (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Chainlink (LINK), and Synthetix (SNX).
After experiencing no major incidents in 2021 or 2022, vulnerabilities resurfaced in 2023, with the protocol suffering a dual exploit totalling $1.138 million in August and September. Balancer had previously compensated earlier victims of hacks, taking decisive actions to pin down affected tokens and review their contracts.
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