Publius (Benjamin Weintraub, Brendan Kelley, Michael Montoya)
// the model, blind
Evaluating only Beanstalk Farms’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked No market fit as the #1 likely cause. Documented cause: Security failure.
Key Events Timeline
FOUNDING
Beanstalk Farms founded as a decentralized credit-based stablecoin protocol by Publius.
PRODUCT LAUNCH
BEAN stablecoin launched on Ethereum mainnet with credit and debt mechanisms maintaining its peg without collateral.
FUNDING
Beanstalk Farms raised $20 million in Series A funding led by prominent venture capital firms.
FRAUD EXPOSURE
Attacker executed a flash loan exploit using $1 billion from Aave to acquire 79% Stalk governance tokens and passed BIP-18 proposal stealing $182 million in protocol assets in a 13-second transaction.
SHUTDOWN
Sudden Collapse: Beanstalk Farms ceases operations following the $182 million governance attack.
Full Analysis
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Documented cause
Beanstalk Farms was a decentralized credit-based stablecoin protocol that maintained the peg of its BEAN stablecoin through credit and debt mechanisms rather than collateral. On April 17, 2022, an attacker executed a sophisticated governance exploit: using a $1 billion flash loan from Aave, the attacker acquired enough Beanstalk governance tokens (Stalk) to control 79% of the voting power. In the same transaction, the attacker submitted and immediately passed a malicious governance proposal (BIP-18) that donated all protocol assets to a 'Ukraine Donation Address' they controlled. Total loss: $182 million. The attack was planned and executed in a single 13-second transaction. The attacker then repaid the flash loan and kept the profit.
Lesson
“A governance system where voting rights can be purchased, used, and returned within a single atomic transaction is not a governance system. It is a vulnerability with a voting UI attached.”