Coinbase Hack

TOTAL LOST $300K
Low MEV composability attack ethereum

Summarize with AI

Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1143 By amount stolen
Year 2025 Incident year

Incident Overview

Chainbase (C) is a cryptocurrency launched in 2025and operates on the BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) platform. Chainbase has a current supply of 1,000,000,000 with 317,999,999 in circulation. The last known price of Chainbase is 0.0493617 USD and is up 1.11 over the last 24 hours.

It is currently trading on 111 active market(s) with $3,346,564.06 traded over the last 24 hours. More information can be found at https://chainbase.com/.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Coinbase
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) ethereum
Attack Technique MEV composability attack
Classification Ecosystem
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Smart Contract Language Solidity
Official Website chainbase.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @ChainbaseHQ

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
AI & Big Data BNB Chain Ecosystem Base Ecosystem DeFAI Binance HODLer Airdrops Binance Alpha Airdrops Binance Ecosystem Binance Listing

What the Attacker Needed to Succeed

Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.

Technical Knowledge Deep understanding of mev composability attack and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with ethereum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Coinbase's contract logic - root cause: ecosystem
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single atomic block
Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Likely — with a thorough MEV composability attack audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Coinbase, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (August 2025).

  • Verify all logic paths related to MEV composability attack are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Frontrunning & Sandwich Attacks attack class for patterns
  • Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Frontrunning & Sandwich Attacks examples →

Proof-of-Concept Exploits

1 PoC available
poc-exploits - coinbase

On-Chain Evidence & References

Sources & References

Learn to Prevent the Next Coinbase

The Coinbase hack is one of many attacks that skilled auditors are trained to detect before deployment. Master real exploit patterns and defense techniques with hands-on Web3 security training.

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