Balance Coin loses 99% of value after $915k exploit

Balance Coin, an algorithmic stablecoin designed to track the U.S. dollar, suffered a catastrophic collapse of more than 99% of its value on July 22, 2026, following a security exploit. The incident drained an estimated $915,000 from the Balance Protocol ecosystem and shattered the token's peg, sending its price from approximately $1 to as low as $0.0012.

The exploit targeted 42DAO, the decentralized autonomous organization that governs the Balance Protocol on the BNB Chain. According to analyses by blockchain security firms SlowMist and PeckShield, the attack involved manipulating a Binance Bitcoin price oracle to artificially deflate the value of Bitcoin-pegged collateral (BTCB). This manipulation tricked the protocol's smart contracts into flagging secure, collateralized vaults as undercollateralized and eligible for liquidation.

The attacker then executed a single-transaction combination to liquidate multiple BTCB vaults, capturing the spread as profit. In a parallel action, the perpetrator minted millions of unauthorized BLC tokens from a null address and sold them into liquidity pools on the decentralized exchange PancakeSwap V2. Security firm TenArmor identified two...