An unidentified trader carried out an unsuccessful operation in the Aave protocol while attempting to exchange $50 M in USDT for the protocol’s native token. The transaction was executed with an extreme price deviation, resulting in multimillion-dollar losses. The project team stated that the smart contracts and routers functioned correctly.
Aave founder Stani Kulechov reported that the user submitted a market order to buy AAVE via a smartphone. The interface displayed a calculated slippage of 1.21% before execution and warned about the potential price impact — up to 99%.
The trader confirmed the transaction despite the warning and accepted the risk. After the order was executed, only 324 AAVE were credited to the wallet — an amount far below the market value of the funds spent.
Platform developer Martin Grabina clarified that CoW Swap routers executed the order strictly according to the specified parameters and without any technical failures.
The Aave team said it plans to return about $0.600 M in fees collected by the network during the transaction. At the same time, the developers are studying ways to strengthen the interface’s protective mechanisms in order to reduce the risk of similar mistakes in the future.