How much was lost in the Growth DeFi hack?

The Growth DeFi hack resulted in $1.4M in losses on February 09, 2021.

What attack technique was used in the Growth DeFi exploit?

The Growth DeFi exploit utilized Flashloan Price Oracle Attack / 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.

Growth DeFi Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.4M

Medium Feb 09, 2021 Flashloan Price Oracle Attack / Rugpull ethereum

Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #749 By amount stolen

Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

The attacker's address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x5e05bc89…21a04b

The attacker created a fake token called AXZ and supplied rAXZZ/GRO liquidity. He then staked it in the contract and pulled out the other pair.

The attacker:

- swapped 0.001 WETH for ~0.0148 GRO:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x97373e45…b304b5

- added ~0.0148 GRO and 100,000,000,000 AXXZ into Uniswap liquidity pair:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xa94c42b8…ea6247

- removed ~27,516 GRO and ~1,218 rAAVE liquidity from Uniswap:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x2152214a…a41a23

- swapped ~27,516 GRO for ~597 WETH and ~1,218 rAAVE on ~203 WETH:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xffef18b3…96797f

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xce020fab…757998

Stolen funds were distributed between 4 external wallets at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0a6b5c92…f817eb

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xac4407bf…2ec2b4

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0391fa91…ece735

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb80894d7…9b680c

This is classified as a Flash Loans Attacks, Oracle Manipulation & Price Manipulation . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Growth DeFi

Date of Incident February 09, 2021

Affected Chain(s) ethereum

Attack Technique Flashloan Price Oracle Attack / Rugpull

Classification Ecosystem / Yield Aggregator

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield

Affected Token GRO

Smart Contract Language Solidity

Official Website growthdefi.com/

Protocol Twitter/X @GrowthDefi

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

MultiversX 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 flashloan price oracle attack / 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 Growth DeFi's contract logic - root cause: ecosystem / yield aggregator

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 $1.4M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Growth DeFi, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (February 2021).

Verify all logic paths related to Flashloan Price Oracle Attack / Rugpull are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Flash Loans Attacks attack class for patterns
Audit oracle price feeds for manipulation risks - ensure time-weighted average prices (TWAPs) or multi-source aggregators are used, not spot prices
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

Related Attack Classes

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

See all Flash Loans Attacks examples →

Flash Loans Attacks Oracle Manipulation & Price Manipulation

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://rekt.news/the-big-combo/
02
Reference https://growthdefi.medium.com/raave-farming-contract-exploit-exp…
03
Reference https://www.rekt.news/the-big-combo/

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

MEDIUM

Attack Vector Flashloan Price Oracle Attack / Rugpull
Root Cause Ecosystem / Yield Aggregator
Year 2021

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