Berachain Halts Network to Contain Balancer-Linked Exploit, Conduct ‘Emergency Hard Fork’

Berachain validators coordinated an emergency network halt after exposure to a vulnerability tied to the Balancer V2 exploit, the project’s core team said on Monday.

“The Berachain validators have coordinated to purposefully halt the network as the core team performs an emergency hard fork to address Balancer V2-related exploits on the BEX,” the Berachain Foundation said on X. “The halt has been executed purposefully, and the network will be operational shortly upon recovering all affected funds.”

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BEX is the network’s biggest decentralized exchange (DEX) and holds over $50 million of tokens as of Monday.

The issue appears to stem from the same Balancer vault access control flaw that enabled attackers to drain tens of millions in assets from liquidity pools earlier in the day, causing over $100 million worth of various tokens to be drained from the Ethereum decentralized finance (DeFi) powerhouse.

The pause will allow developers to roll out an emergency hard fork aimed at isolating compromised contracts and recovering affected assets before resuming operations.

The Balancer attack mainly hit a liquidity pool that included ethena and honey tokens, using a complex series of smart contract interactions.

Because the stolen funds involved multiple non-native assets (and not just Berachain’s own token, BERA), fixing it isn’t as simple as just rolling back a few blocks. The fork won’t be a simple one and could potentially involve rollback or rollfronts.

Meanwhile, Berachain co-founder Smokey The Bera said on X that roughly $12 million in user funds were at risk, prompting validators to take coordinated action.

“I’m sure that some won’t be happy about this and we recognize that this could be seen as a contentious decision,” he said. “Berachain doesn’t benefit from Ethereum’s degree of decentralization, but when user funds are threatened, we act to protect them.”

Monday’s Balancer exploit has rippled across DeFi markets impacting Balancer and several of its forks, including Beets Finance, which also confirmed a security breach on its v2 pools.

Balancer’s BAL token is down about 8% in the past hour, while Berachain’s BERA is down 6%.