Token of Power
An attacker bought a bare majority of the Token of Power governance token directly from its own Balancer liquidity pool, then used that majority to mint 10 billion new TOP through a single governance vote and dumped it back into the pool. About 91 percent of the 16,384 total TOP supply sat in the pool as liquidity, so a governance majority cost only about 663 WETH to acquire. The attacker pulled 944.24 WETH out of the pool in the exploit, but had just seeded 662.86 WETH of that to buy the majority, so the real loss to liquidity providers, and the attacker's actual profit, was about 281 WETH, roughly 472 thousand dollars. Other trackers report the 944 WETH gross figure. The Balancer protocol was not at fault. The pool was only the venue, and the proceeds went to a wallet funded through Tornado Cash.
Token of Power is not one of the protocols we publish a live safety score for, so we had no prior reading on it. The weakness here is the kind our model weighs heavily wherever it applies: a live DAO that can mint its own token without limit, governed by a freely tradeable token whose majority was sitting in a public pool. With most of a 16,384 supply held as liquidity, anyone could buy a governance majority outright, and a thirty day vote period was no protection because the system executes a vote the moment yes votes pass half of the total supply.
There was no access bug. The attacker simply bought a governance majority on the open market. In a setup transaction (acquisition tx) one block before the attack, the attacker's contract swapped 662.86 WETH into the Balancer pool and pulled out 8,192.000001 TOP, just over half of the 16,384 total supply (about 91 percent of which sat in that pool). Then in the exploit tx the contract created a governance vote through the token manager, cast its majority as yes, and the voting app executed it immediately because the result could no longer change. The executed action minted 10,000,000,000 TOP to the contract, which dumped it back into the pool and pulled out 944.24 WETH. Since 662.86 of that was the attacker's own seed returning, the net theft and the attacker's profit were about 281 WETH. The operating wallet was funded from Tornado Cash.
Safe. The Balancer protocol itself and other pools were not affected. The TOP/WETH pool was only the venue where the majority was bought and the minted tokens were sold.
The attacker bought a governance majority from the token's own pool for 662.86 WETH, then used Aragon early execution to pass and execute a mint vote in one transaction, minting 10 billion TOP and dumping it back for 944.24 WETH gross. Net of the seed, the real loss was about 281 WETH. The 30 day vote period gave no protection because a vote executes the moment yes votes pass half of total supply.
Full forensic detail
Step-by-step reconstruction, root cause, counterfactuals, remediation, and disclosure timeline.
Exploit anatomy
Root cause
The root cause is a token-weighted Aragon DAO that held uncapped authority to mint its own token, governed by a freely tradeable token whose majority was simply for sale. Total supply was only 16,384, and about 91 percent of it was held as liquidity in the project's own Balancer pool, so the attacker acquired a bare majority on the open market by swapping 662.86 WETH for 8,192.000001 TOP one block before the attack. There was no access-control exploit. The decisive and often misstated detail is the execution timing. The voting app's vote period was thirty days, which looks like a delay, but Aragon executes a vote the instant the yes votes alone exceed the required support of the total supply, because at that point the result is mathematically final. With just over half the supply the attacker's single yes vote met that condition immediately, so the thirty day period gave no protection at all. The on-chain vote record confirms this exactly: yes votes of 8,192.000001 against a total voting power of 16,384, zero no votes, and executed set to true, with an action script that calls the token manager to mint ten billion TOP to the attacker's contract. The combination that made this total rather than partial was a purchasable governance majority, uncapped minting, and execution that is atomic with the vote. On the economics, the widely reported 944.24 WETH is the gross amount pulled from the pool in the exploit, but 662.86 WETH of it was the attacker's own seed returning, so the pool's real loss and the attacker's profit were about 281 WETH. The Balancer pool was only the venue.
Prevention analysis
Similar incidents
A governance proposal was passed by an attacker who acquired majority voting power, then executed to drain the protocol. Same class: token-weighted governance won outright and used against the treasury.
An attacker gained majority control of governance through a malicious proposal and seized control of the DAO. Same shape: majority of votes turned into full control of privileged actions.
A privileged mint path with no cap was used to mint billions of tokens and dump them for value. Same impact mechanism: uncapped minting turned into an unlimited supply attack.