Venus Protocol, a major decentralized lending platform, has detected a supply cap attack on its liquidity pool for the Thena (THE) token. The platform’s risk manager, Allez Labs, reported the attacker accumulated about 84% of THE’s market cap and used it as collateral to borrow millions in other cryptocurrencies, resulting in suspected losses exceeding $3.7 million. Venus has paused all borrows and withdrawals for THE as the investigation continues, while THE’s price fell over 17% following the news.
Venus Protocol said it detected suspicious trading activity affecting liquidity pools for the Thena (THE) and Cake (CAKE) tokens. The platform announced it was “taking precautionary action by pausing all THE borrows and withdrawals effective immediately.”
The platform’s designated risk manager, Allez Labs, identified the incident as a suspected supply cap attack executed in two phases. The attacker steadily accumulated roughly 84% of THE’s total market cap before executing a lending attack.
Using THE as collateral, the exploiter borrowed 6.67 million CAKE tokens, $1.58 million in USDC, 2,801 BNB, and 20 Bitcoin. The total amount lost is over $3.7 million, according to on-chain analysts.
Following the attack, the price of THE fell more than 17% in 24 hours to approximately $0.2255. The incident underscores persistent cybersecurity threats within the decentralized finance sector.
This event contrasts with broader industry trends showing a recent decline in losses from code exploits. The value lost in crypto-related hacks fell to $49 million in February, its lowest level in nearly a year according to security firm PeckShield.
However, there has been a noted uptick in phishing and social engineering scams targeting individual users. A report from Nominis stated these scams often use fake websites with malware designed to steal private keys.
