MTDAO Hack

TOTAL LOST $280K
Low Flash Loan Attack

Summarize with AI

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1169 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Flash Loan Attack Target category

Incident Overview

A suspicious flashloan caused a slippage on the MTDAO (MT) project, leading to a 90% drop in value, and $280k worth of funds lost.

On October 16th 2022, a suspicious flashloan occurred on the MTDAO (MT) project, which caused a significant slippage and a drop of around 90% in the value of the token. The flashloan was used to obtain 730 BNB, which is equivalent to around $280k. The funds were then sent to EOA 0xb2e8, which deposited them into TornadoCash, a privacy-focused Ethereum mixer.

The rest of the funds, approximately $219k, were bridged to Ethereum mainnet and remain in EOA 0xD0665. It is unclear who is behind the exploit, and investigations are ongoing.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project MTDAO
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Flash Loan Attack
Classification Token
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Flash Loan Attack
Affected Token MT
Official Website www.mmdao.capital/
Protocol Twitter/X @mtdao_?lang=en
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
BNB Chain 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 flash loan attack and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Flash loan capital (borrowed atomically, zero upfront cost)
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in MTDAO's contract logic - root cause: token
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? Yes — skilled auditors routinely flag Flash Loan Attack vulnerabilities in code review

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

  • Verify all logic paths related to Flash Loan Attack are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Flash Loans Attacks attack class for patterns
  • 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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Related Attack Classes

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

See all Flash Loans Attacks examples →

Sources & References

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