Yapeswap Suffers Governance Attack Resulting in $21,900 Loss
Yapeswap, an Ethereum-based DeFi protocol, experienced a governance attack that led to a significant financial loss. The attack exploited a zero-quorum setting to transfer control of a critical role to the attacker.
The Ethereum DeFi protocol Yapeswap was targeted in a governance attack that resulted in a loss of approximately $21,900. The attack took advantage of WorkersUnion’s zero-quorum setting, which allowed a proposal supported by only around 0.000055% of the voting power to transfer the feeToSetter role of YapeFactory to the attacker. This transfer enabled the attacker to implement a malicious Registry that manipulated the protocol's functionality.
The malicious Registry caused the latestVault() function to return fake vaults, while the vaults() function continued to list the legitimate ones. This discrepancy led to YapePair counting the diverted deposits as farming assets without issuing redeemable shares, ultimately resulting in the financial loss. The incident highlights the vulnerabilities that can arise from governance mechanisms in decentralized finance protocols.
The attack occurred on the Ethereum blockchain, which means that all transactions and changes made during the incident can be traced on-chain. The specific addresses involved in the attack were not disclosed, but the manipulation of the feeToSetter role and the subsequent actions taken by the attacker are recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. This on-chain record provides a detailed account of the events that transpired during the attack.