Monday, November 10, 2025

Arithmetic came for DeFi’s veterans this week, reminding everyone that the biggest protocol killers aren’t new exploits or zero-days - they’re the ghosts of old math, still rounding down after four long years.

Month in Review: Top DeFi Hacks of October 2025 (3 min)
October gave DeFi a rare breather with only three hacks crossing the $1M mark and total losses landing around $16M. But beneath the quiet month lay familiar lessons. Abracadabra lost $1.8M to a transaction state flaw, Typus Finance bled $3.4M from a compromised oracle, and Garden Finance saw $11M vanish through a solver exploit. And then came the PYUSD fiasco. A $300 trillion accidental mint that evaporated into a burn address, proving once again that regulation can’t patch sloppy key control. Even in a calm month, DeFi’s weakest link isn’t always the hacker - it’s the human.

How Token Design Shapes Web3 Security (5 min)
In 2025, token design isn’t just about supply charts and emission curves, it’s security architecture. Governance coins double as attack vectors, staking tokens become contagion triggers, and cross-chain collateral loops tie entire ecosystems to a single point of failure. From real-world asset exposure to DAO capture risks, today’s protocols face threats born from their own economics.

A Guide to Perpetual DEX Architecture & Security (25 min)
Perpetual DEXes are DeFi’s answer to Wall Street’s futures desks, offering non-expiring leverage, round-the-clock trading, and code-based settlement with no clearinghouse in sight. Platforms like GMX, dYdX, and Hyperliquid now move over $1.5 trillion a month, up 52% year-over-year, turning decentralized perps into 18% of the global derivatives market. But beneath the composable brilliance lies a ticking time bomb of unchecked leverage, oracle lag, and liquidation spirals.

How SparkDEX Saved $1.5M With Automated Detection of a Failed Exploit (4 min)
An exploiter tried to drain SparkDEX for $1.5M and lost $85K of their own funds instead. Running on Flare and guarded by Hypernative’s real-time monitoring, SparkDEX flipped the script on DeFi’s usual asymmetry, catching the attack mid-execution and pausing its perps module before the damage hit. The result: zero losses, one humiliated hacker, and a protocol that used the seized tokens to fund an audit and a buyback.

Community-Powered Threat Detection in Web3 (4 min)
Smart contracts can’t spot a scam DM but your community can. As exploits evolve beyond code into governance, interfaces, and social manipulation, decentralized vigilance is becoming security’s new frontier. The fastest exploit detections in 2025 didn’t come from AI - they came from users flagging odd gas spikes and fake UIs before the bots caught up.

AI and the Collapse of Crypto Trust. In 2025, AI turned crypto scams into an industrial operation. Deepfakes sell fake investments, voice clones pose as founders, and chatbots run entire fraud rings. Nearly $10 billion in scam revenue and $2.17 billion in stolen funds later, the industry still hides behind audits and awareness campaigns. The threat now moves at machine speed, while defenses crawl.

Europol Dismantles $689M Scam Network. Nine arrests across Europe exposed a labyrinth of fake trading sites, influencer ads, and laundered stablecoins. The gang turned social trust into profit, proving that in 2025, the most powerful exploit isn’t in code - it’s in human belief.

Sweden’s Data Fallout in Miljödata Breach. Hackers crippled Miljödata, the IT backbone for most Swedish municipalities, leaking the personal data of up to 1.5 million citizens. The attackers demanded 1.5 Bitcoin before dumping names, IDs, and children’s details on the dark web.

Operation Chargeback Unmasks a Global Credit Card Empire. Authorities dismantled a €300 million fraud network that quietly skimmed from 4.3 million victims across 193 countries. For years, scammers used fake subscriptions, shell companies, and complicit payment providers to siphon funds under the radar.

Washington Strikes Pyongyang’s Crypto Lifeline. The US Treasury sanctioned North Korean bankers and front companies accused of laundering billions in stolen crypto to fund Kim’s weapons program. For three years, Pyongyang’s hackers siphoned $3 billion through malware, fake IT gigs, and shell banks across China and Russia.

• Resonance completed a comprehensive audit of Rhea Finance’s Liquid Staking Protocol on NEAR. The audit was led by three senior engineers with deep expertise in Rust and smart contract security. Resonance identified six findings, one medium-severity logic flaw, one storage oversight, and several minor code-quality improvements, all either fixed or acknowledged. The report highlighted Rhea’s clean architecture and validator pool logic, noting exceptional code readability (9/10) and test integrity (7/10). Resonance’s methodology blended static and dynamic analysis with adversarial simulation, validating Rhea’s rNEAR staking flow, validator weighting, and automated reward sync as secure and resilient under live-chain conditions.

• Cantina audited Euler’s Swap Protocol, uncovering 9 total findings - 3 low-severity and 6 informational - all fixed or acknowledged. The review improved fee-recipient validation, added missing event emissions, and corrected initialization sequencing in pool activation logic. Documentation, code structure, and admin safety were also enhanced, strengthening Euler Swap’s operational transparency and reducing future configuration risks.

• Hacken audited Dirol, a multi-router DEX aggregator on Monad, completing its final report on Oct 31 2025. The review identified 34 issues - including 1 critical and 5 high - with 33 resolved and 1 mitigated. Fixes reinforced weighted routing logic, input validation, and fee handling across six DEX types, while improving router safety, limit order execution, and upgrade controls. The audit confirmed 100% test coverage and validated Dirol’s core aggregator and gasless limit-order modules for secure multi-hop trading.

• Quantstamp audited Fragmetric’s Liquid Restaking Program on Solana, identifying three findings - one low and two informational - with all fixed or acknowledged. The review confirmed strong architecture, secure reward and restaking logic, and solid adherence to best practices. Fixes enhanced reward synchronization, delegation controls, and fund governance transparency, while tests and verification confirmed reliable multi-vault operations across SOL, JTO, BTC, and other assets under Fragmetric’s expanding restaking framework.

• FailSafe audited BetterBank: The audit found 7 high-severity, 1 medium, and 3 low issues; six of the high-severity ones were resolved before launch.

• Hacken audited AmaraStaking on EVM, covering its fixed-APY tiers, epoch-aware halving, and clawback logic, and reported 15 findings - 13 resolved, 1 mitigated, 1 accepted. Fixes addressed reward underflow around halving, principal-haircut math, penalty rounding, and tightened halving and emergency-withdrawal controls.

One year ago, DeltaPrime turned déjà vu into a business model - getting exploited twice in sixty days. After a $6 million private key meltdown, they followed up with a $4.85 million drain from an unchecked input flaw across Arbitrum and Avalanche. The hacker didn’t flee; they farmed, staking stolen funds like they’d just won a grant. Audits had warned them twice, but DeltaPrime ignored both.

She promised 300% returns and delivered one of the biggest crypto heists in history. Jimn Chian turned billions in investor money into 61,000 Bitcoin, vanished into London luxury, and lived like the queen of a digital empire built on lies. Seven years later, the police caught up - but her victims are still waiting for the truth to pay interest.

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We are all rekt.