Wise Lending V1 Hack

TOTAL LOST $464K
Low Rounding Donation Attack / Other ethereum

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1031 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Lending Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Wise Lending protocol was exploited on Ethereum Mainnet, losing 178.19 ETH.

Details of the Exploit

Wise Lending is a decentralized lending and borrowing protocol. On January 12, 2024, the protocol was exploited on the Ethereum Mainnet due to a smart contract vulnerability, which resulted in a loss of over 178.19 ETH worth approximately $449,413 USD. The root cause of the exploit is due to the precision loss in smart contract operations.

The exploiter took advantage of a nearly empty PLP-stETH-Dec2025 market in the protocol, which was deployed just a day prior to the attack incident, in order to inflate the share price. The attacker was funded by Tornado Cash and the stolen funds were transferred to another EOA.

Block Data Reference

Attacker Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xB90CF1d7…2B45Dc

Funds Holder as of Jan 16, 2024:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x592856d6…C52530

Malicious Transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x04e16a79…d8bc31

Malicious Contract Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x91c49Cc7…f9d82c

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Wise Lending V1
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) ethereum
Attack Technique Rounding Donation Attack / Other
Classification Protocol Logic / Borrowing and Lending
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Lending
Affected Token WISE
Smart Contract Language Solidity
Official Website wisetoken.net/
Protocol Twitter/X @Wise_Lending
Team Anonymous
Source Code Verified On-Chain

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 rounding donation attack / other 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 Wise Lending V1's contract logic - root cause: protocol logic / borrowing and lending
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 Rounding Donation Attack / Other audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Wise Lending V1, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (January 2024).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Rounding Donation Attack / Other 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

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