How much was lost in the Stable Yield Credit hack?

The Stable Yield Credit hack resulted in $494K in losses on January 05, 2021.

What attack technique was used in the Stable Yield Credit exploit?

The Stable Yield Credit exploit utilized Honeypot. 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.

Stable Yield Credit Hack

TOTAL LOST $494K

Low Jan 05, 2021 Honeypot ethereum

Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1014 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Honeypot Target category

Incident Overview

The contract owner could disable the transfer function, which restricted users in selling their tokens.

The contract deployer added initial liquidity at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xed3fb3f2…1ae84b

The liquidity was removed by the contract deployer at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x17527fed…fd3ebc

The token contract is unverified.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Stable Yield Credit

Date of Incident January 05, 2021

Affected Chain(s) ethereum

Attack Technique Honeypot

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Honeypot

Affected Token yCREDIT

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 honeypot 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 Stable Yield Credit'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? Likely — with a thorough Honeypot audit checklist and test coverage

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

Verify all logic paths related to Honeypot 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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Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://twitter.com/CaptainJackAPE/status/1344545067785043968

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Honeypot
Root Cause Token
Year 2021

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