Beanstalk Farms
Summary
Beanstalk Farms is an Ethereum-based algorithmic stablecoin protocol that issues the BEAN token using a credit-based, uncollateralized peg mechanism. On April 17, 2022, the protocol suffered one of the largest governance exploits in DeFi history when an attacker used a flash loan to seize supermajority voting power and drain approximately $182 million from the protocol's liquidity pools. The protocol relaunched in August 2022 following a community fundraise, subsequent security audits, and governance restructuring, and later migrated to Arbitrum via BIP-50.
Connected Entities
1 entities- + 2 more
Timeline(13 events)
2021-08-06
Beanstalk protocol launched on Ethereum mainnet, issuing the BEAN algorithmic stablecoin.
2021-12-03
Beanstalk DAO approves BIP-5, committing to hire Omniscia for a formal smart contract audit.
2022-04-02
Omniscia completes its audit of Beanstalk's core smart contracts, finding no outstanding issues. The governance code later exploited was outside the audit scope.
2022-04-17
Beanstalk suffers a governance flash loan attack. The attacker flashloans over $1 billion from Aave and other sources, acquires supermajority Stalk governance power, passes a malicious proposal, and drains approximately $182 million from the protocol. Net attacker profit is approximately $76-80 million. BEAN collapses ~86% from peg. Stolen funds laundered through Tornado Cash.
2022-04-17
Beanstalk Farms founders (operating as 'Publius') reveal their identities as Benjamin Weintraub, Brendan Sanderson, and Michael Montoya at an emergency Discord town hall to demonstrate non-involvement.
2022-04-23
Beanstalk DAO approves hiring Halborn for a post-exploit security audit.
2022-06-06
The Barn Raise recapitalization fundraiser launches. Over $5.5 million in Fertilizer tokens sold in the first hour.
2022-07-13
Halborn completes its audit of Beanstalk, identifying 17 findings all resolved or acknowledged.
2022-07-22
Trail of Bits completes its audit of Beanstalk, identifying 13 findings all resolved or acknowledged.
2022-08-04
BIP-21 (Replant proposal) achieves supermajority approval. Barn Raise has attracted over $17 million USDC in credit commitments.
2022-08-06
Beanstalk relaunches via the Replant event on the protocol's one-year anniversary. On-chain governance is replaced with a community multi-sig wallet. Over 99% of Stalk holders backed the relaunch.
2023-05-01
BEAN stablecoin reported trading at approximately $0.91, exhibiting a persistent depeg despite algorithmic incentives designed to restore the peg.
2024-01-01
Beanstalk implements BIP-50, migrating the protocol from Ethereum mainnet to Arbitrum One to reduce transaction costs and improve throughput.
Decision Log
- hash: HD6Riqms9igSi69kiYiupaV6SFVVrfocQyWgLS2y1m1G
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain and source URLs are archived via the Internet Archive.
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
generated: 5/30/2026, 6:24:39 PM
last updated: 5/30/2026, 6:24:58 PM
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