Venus Protocol experienced a hostile takeover this morning. Fortunately, the Venus team has stopped this attack through the Governance guardian, a security measure that is supposed to only be activated in emergency situations. It has also been implemented in Compound GovernorAlpha to deal with similar situations before the GovernorBravo Proposal.
This was a VIP42 attack. Essentially, the attacker attempts to take control of the protocol through bribery, which will directly endanger the security and stability of Venus. They want this to stop and are encouraging the community to provide feedback and suggestions on how to improve their existing security measures.
The Venus DAO is constantly evolving and adapting. Venus recognizes that their current DAO is at “high risk of being hijacked by hostile whales”. In order to optimize their DAO, Governor Alpha moved to GovernorBravo and Synthetic introduced Spartan Councils, and a16Z also published a very good summary on DeFi governance . Venus recognizes the issues plaguing their DAO and are working to stop this hostile takeover to not only protect users but their entire protocol.
Venus has responded to the community. Here is the action they will take.
We will propose a better DAO and are looking forward to discussing with top DeFi projects and Venus Communities to define a more secure DAO for Venus next. However, in the meantime, we will use this guardian for any absurd or hostile VIPs to protect our communities.
Venus Protocol
BSCTimes will continue to monitor this situation. Until more is known about the situation, we recommend to use caution with Venus, and possibly use others such as Fortress. You may read Venus Protocol’s response here.