Gain Hack

TOTAL LOST $3.0M
Medium Infinite Mint ethereum
Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #631 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Onchain Capital Allocator Target category

Incident Overview

Grain (GRA) is a cryptocurrency . Users are able to generate GRA through the process of mining. Grain has a current supply of 970,635,753.

The last known price of Grain is 0.0000001 USD and is up 0.00 over the last 24 hours. More information can be found at http://www.graincoin.org/.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Gain
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) ethereum
Attack Technique Infinite Mint
Classification Token & Share Accounting

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Onchain Capital Allocator
Smart Contract Language Solidity
Official Website www.graincoin.org/
Protocol Twitter/X @KelpDAO

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
BNB Chain Ecosystem Launchpad Ethereum Ecosystem XDC Ecosystem

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 infinite mint 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 Gain's contract logic - root cause: token & share accounting
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 Infinite Mint audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Gain, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (February 2024).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Infinite Mint 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.

Free Trial

Learn to Prevent the Next Gain

The Gain 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.

Recreate exploit patterns safely Free Trial