I’ve been doing research on liquid staking and everyone talks about potential dangers and downsides. But I want to know about actual incidents where things went badly. Have there been any real situations where liquid staking platforms failed, got hacked, or users lost money? I’m comparing different staking methods and trying to figure out if the convenience of liquid staking is worth the extra risks. Traditional staking seems safer but less flexible. Are there documented cases of liquid staking going wrong that I should know about before making a decision?
steth depegged hard in June 2022 - dropped to 0.93 eth. wasn’t lido’s fault but anyone who needed out got wrecked. the ankr exploit was worse tho - their liquid staking got completely drained and abnbc basically went to zero overnight. that’s the biggest liquid staking hack i’ve seen.
The Ankr hack in December 2022 was liquid staking’s worst nightmare. Hackers minted 20 trillion aBNBc tokens from nothing and dumped them all. I watched it happen live - the token crashed from parity to zero in minutes. Anyone holding aBNBc got wiped out completely. pSTAKE had major validator problems in early 2023 too, leaving users unable to unstake for weeks. Look, liquid staking is convenient, but it adds tons of smart contract risks that regular staking doesn’t have. That’s why hackers love targeting these protocols.
Great question! I’ve been wondering the same thing. Everyone talks about theoretical risks, but actual cases are tough to find.
Lido had some slashing incidents early on - nothing massive though. StakeHound lost access to their validator keys, which was a mess, but I’m fuzzy on the details.
What I’m really curious about - are you looking at Ethereum liquid staking specifically or other chains too? Smaller protocols on other networks probably had bigger failures, but nobody talks about them.
Also, what timeframe? Recent stuff or going back to early experiments? The landscape’s changed massively in the past couple years.
Have you looked at depegging events? Some liquid staking tokens temporarily lost their peg. Not exactly a “failure” but users could still lose money depending on timing. What’ve you found in your research so far?