A suspected hacker address manipulated THE price, triggering a cascade of liquidations in the Venus Protocol, resulting in profits exceeding 5.07 million dollars

A wallet address that received 7,447 ETH (approximately $16.29 million) from Tornado Cash, "0x7a7," is suspected to be behind the CAKE/THE liquidation cascade event on Venus Protocol.

The attacker borrowed $9.92 million in stablecoins using ETH as collateral on Aave, then hoarded a large amount of THE and allegedly manipulated the price upwards on centralized exchanges, subsequently depositing 36.1 million THE into Venus to borrow assets like BTC, BNB, and CAKE.

About 40 minutes later, the price of THE collapsed, triggering a series of liquidations, resulting in $2.15 million in bad debts for Venus. The attacker extracted approximately $5.07 million in assets, with actual profits potentially being higher—mainly from short positions on centralized exchanges during the crash.