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anchored·2FgHGw…jduXSummary
Euler Finance V1 was a permissionless DeFi lending protocol on Ethereum that launched in December 2021 and was exploited for approximately $197 million on March 13, 2023, in what was the largest DeFi hack of that year. The attack exploited a missing health check in the donateToReserves function introduced in EIP-14, despite the codebase having undergone multiple external audits. In a highly unusual outcome, the pseudonymous attacker known as 'Jacob' returned all recoverable funds by April 3, 2023, with the total recovered value reaching approximately $240 million due to ETH price appreciation during the recovery period.
Connected Entities
1 entities- + 3 more
Timeline(14 events)
2020
Euler Finance whitepaper published by founders including Michael Bentley.
2021
Euler Finance testnet launched.
December 2021
Euler Finance V1 launches on Ethereum mainnet.
July 2022
WatchPug audits EIP-14 upgrade for Sherlock; audit does not identify the donateToReserves vulnerability.
13 March 2023
Euler Finance V1 exploited via flash loan attack; approximately $197 million drained across DAI, USDC, stETH, and WBTC. Exploit transaction hash: 0x62bd3d31a7b75c098ccf28bc4d4af8c4a191b4b9e451fab4232258079e8b18c4.
13 March 2023
Euler Labs detects the attack and blocks the vulnerable module; protocol paused.
14 March 2023
Euler Labs announces $1 million reward for information leading to attacker identification and publicly offers attacker a 10% retention bounty (~$19.7M) to return remaining funds.
17 March 2023
Attacker sends 100 ETH to a wallet attributed by OFAC to North Korea's Lazarus Group, raising temporary state-actor attribution concerns.
18 March 2023
First return of funds: approximately 3,000 ETH (~$5.3M) transferred back to Euler.
21 March 2023
Lazarus Group-linked address sends on-chain phishing message to the Euler attacker, according to security researchers.
25 March 2023
Major return: 51,000 ETH (~$90M) returned by the attacker. Attacker using pseudonym 'Jacob' sends on-chain apology.
3 April 2023
Euler Labs announces all recoverable funds have been returned. Total recovered value: approximately $240 million (exceeding $197M stolen due to ETH price appreciation).
February 2024
Euler V2 announced following 31 additional security audits and extensive protocol redesign.
September 2024
Euler V2 launches on Ethereum mainnet with modular Euler Vault Kit (EVK) and Ethereum Vault Connector (EVC) architecture.
Decision Log
- hash: 43gbsx3S4btZdz3evBiR5BqsDBv4SLP9r9FF9whgX5JK
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain (1 event). 23 of 30 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.
model: claude-sonnet-4-5
generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:43 AM
last updated: 8/30/2026, 5:14:11 AM
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