Genesis Hack

TOTAL LOST $2.8B
Critical #7 All-Time Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #7 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Genesis crypto trading platform has 2,800,000,000 $USD in outstanding loans on a balance sheet. The firm revealed it had about 175,000,000 $USD in its FTX account, and withdrawals were halted on the platform due to the situation on the market.

Details of the Exploit

Genesis is a platform for trading, derivatives, and lending. Genesis is a counterparty to many in the digital asset space and is closely watched as a gauge of the industry's strength. It's among the lenders that suffered from the prolonged crypto fall.

The company has 2,800,000,000 $USD in outstanding loans. On 10 November the company revealed it had roughly 175,000,000 $USD worth of funds stuck in an FTX trading account. On 16 November withdrawals were halted on the platform, due to "unprecedented market turmoil" after the FTX collapse.

On 22 November the spokesman for Genesis said they are aiming to resolve the situation without filing for bankruptcy.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Genesis
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification CeFi,Borrowing and Lending
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2 View Post-Mortem #3

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield
Official Website genesistrading.com
Protocol Twitter/X @https://mobile.twitter.com/GenesisTrading
Team Public / Doxxed
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
BNB Chain Ecosystem
Protocol Links

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 other and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Genesis's contract logic - root cause: cefi,borrowing and lending
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 Other audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $2.8B. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Genesis, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2022).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Other 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

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