Beanstalk Governance Hack
What happened
Beanstalk's Ethereum governance system was exploited on April 17, 2022 through temporary voting power funded with flash liquidity. Security analyses estimated roughly $181 million in gross protocol-value impact, while Beanstalk's own disclosure described about $77 million in non-BEAN user assets taken. Those figures use different measures and are not added together.
Current Silo deposits immediately conferred Stalk voting power. The emergency execution path allowed a temporary two-thirds majority to authorize proposal code before the borrowed voting capital had to be repaid.
How it happened
- The attacker submitted malicious governance proposals ahead of the exploit transaction.
- More than $1 billion in flash liquidity funded LP positions deposited into the Silo, giving the attacker over two-thirds of Stalk voting power.
emergencyCommit()executed BIP-18. Its attacker-supplied logic ran through the Diamond's privileged execution path and withdrew protocol assets.- The attacker unwound positions and repaid the flash loans within the same transaction.
Beanstalk removed the compromised governance mechanism. Its disclosure separates approximately $77 million in non-BEAN assets taken from the broader $181 million impact estimate.
Protocol details
Security review history
- Omniscia View report
- Trail of Bits View report
- Halborn View report
Evidence
Proof of concept
1 availableSources
- report Post-mortem rekt.news
- report Post-mortem medium.com
- report Twitter/X Alert twitter.com
- report @FrankResearcher incident report twitter.com
- report @kelvinfichter incident report twitter.com
- report Governor DAO Beanstalk governance exploit post-mortem docs.governordao.org
- transaction Transaction etherscan.io
- transaction Etherscan exploit transaction etherscan.io
- analysis Beanstalk governance exploit disclosure bean.money
- analysis Blog reference blog.defiyield.app
- analysis DeFiLlama defillama.com
- analysis Beanstalk disclosures docs.bean.money
- analysis Immunefi Beanstalk governance attack analysis immunefi.com
Understand the attack patterns
Build your security review skills
Work through hands-on labs covering real exploit mechanics, review techniques, and defensive patterns.
