Stake DAO Hack

TOTAL LOST $176K
Low Oracle Message Spoofing arbitrum base

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain arbitrum 2 chains affected
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1342 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Stake DAO (SDT) is a cryptocurrency and operates on the Ethereum platform. Stake DAO has a current supply of 65,085,259.52 with 23,896,734.96 in circulation. The last known price of Stake DAO is 0.15505171 USD and is down -2.83 over the last 24 hours.

It is currently trading on 30 active market(s) with $3,999.37 traded over the last 24 hours. More information can be found at https://stakedao.org/.

This is classified as a Oracle Manipulation & Price Manipulation . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Stake DAO
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) arbitrum base
Attack Technique Oracle Message Spoofing
Classification Protocol Logic
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield
Smart Contract Language Solidity
Official Website stakedao.org/
Protocol Twitter/X @StakedaoHQ

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Yield Farming Yield Aggregator Polygon Ecosystem Arbitrum Ecosystem Olympus Pro Ecosystem Ethereum Ecosystem Liquid Staking Governance Tokens
Protocol Links
Telegram

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 oracle message spoofing and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with arbitrum, base smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Stake DAO'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? Yes — skilled auditors routinely flag Oracle Message Spoofing vulnerabilities in code review
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $176K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Stake DAO, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 2026).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Oracle Message Spoofing are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Oracle Manipulation & Price Manipulation 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

Related Attack Classes

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

See all Oracle Manipulation & Price Manipulation examples →

Oracle Manipulation & Price Manipulation

Proof-of-Concept Exploits

1 PoC available
poc-exploits - stake dao
$ StakeOnMe Owner-privileged JAKE burn reserve drain

On-Chain Evidence & References

Sources & References

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