KyberSwap Elastic
HackedDeFi · $KNC · born 2023 · ✝ 2023
A concentrated-liquidity DEX undone by its own tick math.
KyberSwap Elastic was a concentrated-liquidity AMM that was exploited in November 2023 across five chains. The attacker abused a flaw in the swap logic around liquidity tick boundaries to mint phantom liquidity and drain pools.
- Peak
- ~$48M stolen
- Cause
- Hacked
- Year of death
- 2023
☠️ Cause of death
A flash-loan-assisted exploit of the swap accounting logic let the attacker manipulate tick boundaries and withdraw far more than was deposited.
📓 Lessons left behind
- —Concentrated-liquidity math needs invariant and edge-case testing.
- —Flash loans turn rounding bugs into total drains.
- —Audit the tick-crossing logic, not just the happy path.
🌱 The idea that survived
Invariant testing for AMMs
Advanced the use of formal invariant and fuzz testing for concentrated-liquidity accounting.
#defi#amm#flash-loan#logic-bug