Meta Pool’s $27M Exploit Limited due to mpETH Lack of Liquidity - Unchained

Multi-chain asset-staking protocol Meta Pool suffered an exploit due to a critical bug in its staking smart contract — a vulnerability that allowed an attacker to mint 9,700 of the protocol’s mpETH tokens, valued at around $27 million, without needing to stake the underlying ETH.

mpETH is Meta Pool’s liquid staking token that represents staked ETH within the protocol and can be traded or used in DeFi applications.

This unauthorized minting occurred through a flaw in the contract’s minting logic, specifically related to the “fast unstake” functionality, which bypassed the usual waiting period for unstaked funds.

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Despite the potential for massive losses, the attacker only managed to extract about 52.5 ETH, worth around $132,000, from liquidity swap pools before the Meta Pool team detected the exploit and paused the affected contract.

“Resolving the security issue is now a top priority, and developers are actively working on developing a plan to restore functionality,” said the Meta Pool team

The protocol also reassured users that all ETH staked on the protocol remains safe and delegated to SSV Network operators, who continue to validate blocks and accrue staking rewards on the Ethereum mainnet.