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Moonwell Oracle Misconfiguration Leads to
cbETH Pricing Anomaly, Resulting in $1.78M Bad Debt

Due to an oracle misconfiguration, Moonwell incorrectly priced cbETH at approximately $1, triggering large-scale liquidations and ultimately resulting in $1,779,044 in bad debt. The team has urgently restricted relevant market operations and will fix the oracle configuration via a governance proposal.

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Moonwell Oracle Misconfiguration Leads to cbETH Pricing Anomaly, Resulting in $1.78M Bad Debt
  • Exploit Date: February 18, 2026
  • Target Project: Moonwell
  • Project Overview: Moonwell is a decentralized lending protocol on Base and Optimism that supports lending, borrowing, and liquidation services for various crypto assets.
  • Loss Amount: $1,779,044
  • Attack Vector: Oracle Misconfiguration

Incident Review & Technical Details

  1. Attack Path: During the execution of governance proposal MIP-X43, the oracle was misconfigured. The system failed to correctly multiply the cbETH/ETH exchange rate with the ETH/USD price feed, using only the raw exchange rate instead. This caused the reported price of cbETH to drop to approximately $1.
  2. Impact: The anomaly triggered massive erroneous liquidations. Liquidation bots seized users' collateral at an extremely low cost, leaving the protocol with substantial bad debt.
  3. Official Assessment: The issue stemmed from an oracle configuration error rather than a vulnerability in the underlying smart contract code.
  4. Investigation Progress: The borrow cap and supply cap for cbETH have been reduced to their minimums. A subsequent governance vote will be held to restore the correct oracle configuration.

Reference

https://decrypt.co/358374/oracle-error-leaves-defi-lender-moonwell-1-8-million-bad-debt