Nereus Finance Exploited for $371,000

Lending protocol Nereus Finance is the latest victim of a flash loan exploit in the crypto industry. The hacker took off with $371,000 worth of USDC.

How was Nereus exploited? First, the hacker used a custom smart contract and received $51 million from AAVE in a flash loan. Then, he manipulated the block price in Trader Joe LP’s pool on the Avalanche smart contracts platform. Finally, he minted Nereus’ NXUSD token worth $998,000, returned the loan, and walked away with the rest of the money in his pocket.

While no user funds are affected, Nereus had to cover the $500,000 worth of NXUSD, that was created due to the exploit. This “bad debt” was paid with funds from Nereus’ treasury.

The hacker is still at loose. Nereus is offering a 20% reward to the hacker if he returns the stolen funds.