Venus Protocol, a decentralized lending and borrowing platform, said on Sunday that it detected suspicious trading activity in the liquidity pool for Thena Token (THE), the native cryptocurrency of the Thena decentralized finance platform.
The unusual trading activity only affected Cake pools (CAKE), the native cryptocurrency of the decentralized exchange PancakeSwap, and the Thena token, according to an announcement from the Venus protocol. The Venus team said:
“As we continue to investigate the unusual activity in the THE pool, we are taking precautionary measures by suspending all THE borrowing and withdrawals with immediate effect, to prevent further misuse. This will remain in effect until the conclusion of the investigation.”
The suspicious trading activity is suspected to be a supply capping attack that was executed in two phases: a steady accumulation of approximately 84% of the total market capitalization of the THE token, coupled with a lending attack, according to Go Labs, which was identified by Venus Protocol as its risk manager.
The Venus exploiter used the Theta token as collateral to borrow 6.67 million CAKE tokens, or 1.58 million USDC (USDC), 2,801 BNB (BNB) — the native token of the BNB chain — and 20 Bitcoin (BTC), Come on Labs said.
Out of an abundance of caution, withdrawals and borrowings for other tokens, which have low liquidity on the platform, have also been temporarily halted, Allez Labs said. The total amount lost in the attack now stands at more than $3.7 million, according to at Wu Blockchain.
At press time, THE was trading at $0.2255 apiece, down more than 17% in the last 24 hours. according to to pricing data on CoinMarketCap.com.
Cointelegraph reached out to Venus Protocol but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
The incident highlights the cybersecurity and code mining threats facing crypto users and decentralized finance platforms, as the sector grows and security threats that lead to financial losses are becoming more and more sophisticated.
Related: February crypto losses hit lowest level since March 2025, says PeckShield
Monthly crypto losses from hacks decline in February as attackers turn to social engineering scams.
The value lost in crypto-related hacks fell to $49 million in February, the lowest level in almost a year, according to to blockchain security company PeckShield.
Despite the reduction in total value lost to hacks and code exploits in February, there was an uptick in phishing and social engineering scams.
“The majority of individual attacks targeted private users via phishing attacks, malicious signatures, and address poisoning scams,” according to a report. report of the Nominis blockchain intelligence platform.
Phishing scams often use fake websites, which feature addresses that are almost identical to legitimate domain names. These fraudulent websites contain malware designed to steal cryptocurrency private keys or other sensitive information.
Review: White Hat Team “SEAL 911” Formed to Combat Crypto Hacks in Real-Time
