How much was lost in the Deriswap hack?

The Deriswap hack resulted in $3K in losses on December 17, 2020.

What attack technique was used in the Deriswap exploit?

The Deriswap exploit utilized Rugpull. Understanding this attack vector is critical for smart contract auditors and developers building secure DeFi protocols.

How can developers prevent similar smart contract attacks?

Preventing smart contract hacks requires a combination of secure coding practices, thorough security audits, and understanding common attack vectors like reentrancy, oracle manipulation, and access control flaws. Smart Contract Hacking (SCH) provides hands-on training to help developers and auditors identify and prevent vulnerabilities before deployment.

Deriswap Hack

TOTAL LOST $3K

Low Dec 17, 2020 Rugpull ethereum

Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1996 By amount stolen

Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

The team merely had a Github profile and a Telegram group, without a full-fledged website and documentation. They posted a bogus Quantstamp audit on Github to confuse the community. The project team pointed to an official report by Andre Cronje about a December conversation between Yearn and Sushi to show even more legit intentions. It's a second time, where anon dev teams use bogus Deriswap contracts to replicate Andre Cronje's work.

The contract deployer added initial liquidity at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x794fae34…6893ee

The liquidity was removed by the contract deployer at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x794fae34…6893ee

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Deriswap

Date of Incident December 17, 2020

Affected Chain(s) ethereum

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Stablecoin

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Dexs

Affected Token DERI

Official Website crypto.com/defi/swap

Protocol Twitter/X @cryptocom

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 rugpull 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 Deriswap's contract logic - root cause: stablecoin

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? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $3K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Deriswap, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (December 2020).

Verify all logic paths related to Rugpull are guarded by proper access controls and input validation
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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Security Audit History

Audit Report 1 Report

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://t.me/defiyield_ann/297

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Stablecoin
Year 2020

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