At the DeFi protocol Hifi Finance, a previously unknown address gained control of the protocol's governance vote on 28 October 2026 and then drained user collateral worth around 1 million dollars, roughly 900,000 euros at the exchange rate of 29 October. The finding comes from the on-chain analyst Spreek, whose assessment underpins the day's reporting. Four votes, cast shortly before the end of an ongoing ballot, were enough. The same address then minted 25 million new governance tokens.
For investors in Europe, the pattern matters more here than the individual case. A governance attack needs no flaw in the program code that an audit might catch. It uses the voting rules themselves, and at many protocols those rules sit in the open, with no waiting period. Anyone who posts coins as collateral at a DeFi protocol carries that risk too, even if their own wallet is never touched.
What happened at Hifi Finance: four votes just before the ballot closed
Hifi Finance is a lending protocol on Ethereum. Users deposit assets as collateral and borrow against them at a fixed rate. Changes to the protocol are decided by a DAO, an organisation whose resolutions are reached by a vote of token holders and then executed...
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