Hope Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.9M
Medium Router Exploit / Rugpull arbitrum

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain arbitrum Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #685 By amount stolen
Auditors 2 Prior security audits

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Hope Finance was rugpulled, with the scammer making off with approximately 1,860,000 $USD worth of $ETH

Details of the Exploit

Hope Finance is DeFi protocol on the Arbitrum layer-2 chain. The protocol launched an algorithmic token $HOPE pegged to $ETH. The Hope ecosystem contains $HOPE, $DREAM, and $WISH tokens. The protocol was rugpulled by an EOA address that used a multisig wallet to modify the TradingHelper contract's router, so when SwapWETH sends the funds directly to the attacker's address instead of performing a normal swap. The attacker drained 1,095 $ETH which is worth approximately 1,860,000 $USD. All the stolen funds were transferred to the Ethereum chain through Celer and UniSwap and then to Tornado Cash using three addresses.

According to the project's official Twitter, the possible scammer was identified as Ugwoke Pascal Chukwuebuka, also the photo with the ID of the scammer was published in the same tweet.

Web3 Security company Cognitos had audited Hope Finance's smart contracts. Cognitos reported that audited smart contracts and deployed ones are not the same.

Block Data Reference

Attacker addresses:

https://arbiscan.io/address/0x4481a353…4a9113

https://arbiscan.io/address/0xdfcb9a03…3c6145

Malicious transaction:

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0xc9ee5ed2…6b77eb

Addresses used for TornadoCash transfer:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x957D354d…8fCecE

https://etherscan.io/address/0xB83dD80d…3120a5

https://etherscan.io/address/0x43B89dE7…7BA688

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Hope Finance
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) arbitrum
Attack Technique Router Exploit / Rugpull
Classification Rugpull / Stablecoin
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield
Affected Token HOPE
Smart Contract Language Solidity
Official Website hopefinance.xyz/
Protocol Twitter/X @Hope_fin
Team Anonymous
Source Code Verified On-Chain

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Gaming Memes Ethereum Ecosystem Solana Ecosystem BNB Chain Ecosystem Base Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub Reddit

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 router exploit / rugpull and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with arbitrum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Hope Finance's contract logic - root cause: rugpull / 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, Audit Report 2 — still lost $1.9M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Hope Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (February 2023).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Router Exploit / 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

Sources & References

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