LiFi Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $9.7M
Medium Router Exploit via Infinite Approvals linea metis zksync era

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain linea 3 chains affected
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #314 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Lixir Finance is a fully automated and optimized concentrated liquidity manager. Through Lixir, users and other protocols can deploy liquidity in a tight price range on AMMs like Uniswap V3 and Trident without having to worry about the added complexity of active management - Lixir automates this for them. By deploying liquidity in a tight range around the current price, both capital efficiency and liquidity conditions improve dramatically, and liquidity providers enjoy greatly increased LP fees.

In order to maximize efficiency, Lixir makes sure the liquidity maintains in a tight range around the constantly changing price by actively managing it.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project LiFi Finance
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) linea metis zksync era
Attack Technique Router Exploit via Infinite Approvals
Classification Protocol Logic
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Liquidity manager
Smart Contract Language Solidity
Official Website eifi.com
Protocol Twitter/X @lixirfinance

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
BNB Chain Ecosystem
Protocol Links
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 via infinite approvals and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with linea, metis, zksync era smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in LiFi Finance's contract logic - root cause: protocol logic
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 Router Exploit via Infinite Approvals audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $9.7M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

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

  • Verify all logic paths related to Router Exploit via Infinite Approvals 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

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Security Audit History

Sources & References

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