Algo Stablecoin Protocol Beanstalk Relaunches Following $180M Hack

Algorithmic stablecoin protocol Beanstalk said Friday it has resumed its services nearly four months after it was hacked for $180 million in crypto.

Beanstalk Farms, the self-styled “decentralized credit-based stablecoin protocol,” said it has “unpaused” its services concurrent with the one-year anniversary of its debut on the Ethereum mainnet on Aug. 6, 2021.

The protocol developers are hoping its revamped launch will help buoy issues pertaining to its security and trust following a major hack on April 17.

“It’s impossible to predict how it will perform, but Beanstalk Farms’ belief in the possibilities for a permissionless fiat stablecoin is unwavering,” the group wrote in a blog post.

The major hack involving a governance flash loan exploit saw an attacker drain 24,830 ether and 36 million BEAN tokens, worth about $180 million at the time. The unaudited protocol’s hack currently ranks as the industry’s sixth largest exploit, according to the industry tracking website Rekt Leaderboard.

“Since then, Beanstalk Farms and Bean Sprout have worked with the Beanstalk community to prepare the protocol for a safe replant and unpause,” per the post.

A spokesperson for Beanstalk Farms has yet to respond to Blockworks’ request for comment.

Beanstalk is a permissionless fiat stablecoin protocol designed to utilize credit instead of collateral to issue its native stablecoin (BEAN), according to its website.

The protocol claims its primary objective is to “incentivize independent market participants” to cross the price of 1 BEAN over its dollar peg in a “sustainable fashion.” Algorithmic stablecoins have been called into question following the collapse of Terra’s ecosystem in May.

The team behind Beanstalk recently announced a $9 million fundraise for a new protocol dubbed Root.

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