Back to Blog

How Akutar NFT Loses $34,000,000 USD

Code Auditing
April 23, 2022

We find there exist two serious logic vulnerabilities in the @AkuDreams contracts. The first vulnerability can cause a DoS attack and the second vulnerability will make the project fund (more than 34M USD) being locked forever.

Vulnerability I

The first vulnerability exists in the processRefunds function. This function has a loop that will refund each bid user's fund. However, the bidder can be a malicious contract that reverts the transaction. This can cause the invocation of processRefunds revert, and none of user's refunds can be successful. Fortunately, this vulnerability has not been exploited.

We suggest that the contract can take the following measures to refund users.

  • Ensure that only EOA can bid
  • Use ERC20 token, e.g., WETH, instead of ETH
  • Has function that allows a user to get the refund by himself

Vulnerability II

The second vulnerability is a software bug. In the claimProjectFunds function, the project owner can claim the Ether in the contract. However, the require statement require(refundProgress >= totalBids, "Refunds not yet processed"); has a bug, which should compares the refundProgress with _bidIndex instead of totalBids. Due to this vulnerability, the requirement will never be satisfied, and the Ether (11,539.5 Ether) in the contract can be locked for ever.

Summary

We are surprised again (after the NBA NFT case yesterday) that how a high-profile project can neglect the basic software security practice. At least, the project should write enough test cases. Unfortunately, we suspect that the projects are too busy to write the test cases, and lose 3400 USD forever.

About BlockSec

BlockSec is a pioneering blockchain security company established in 2021 by a group of globally distinguished security experts. The company is committed to enhancing security and usability for the emerging Web3 world in order to facilitate its mass adoption. To this end, BlockSec provides smart contract and EVM chain security auditing services, the Phalcon platform for security development and blocking threats proactively, the MetaSleuth platform for fund tracking and investigation, and MetaDock extension for web3 builders surfing efficiently in the crypto world.

To date, the company has served over 300 esteemed clients such as MetaMask, Uniswap Foundation, Compound, Forta, and PancakeSwap, and received tens of millions of US dollars in two rounds of financing from preeminent investors, including Matrix Partners, Vitalbridge Capital, and Fenbushi Capital.

Official website: https://blocksec.com/

Official Twitter account: https://twitter.com/BlockSecTeam

Sign up for the latest updates
Web3 Companion: The Open-Source Secure Agentic Wallet

Web3 Companion: The Open-Source Secure Agentic Wallet

BlockSec open-sources Web3 Companion, a security-first agentic wallet that treats its own AI agent as untrusted and uses key isolation, hard policies, and Passkey to protect on-chain assets.

~$5.98M Lost: Aztec, Raydium & More | BlockSec Weekly
Security Insights

~$5.98M Lost: Aztec, Raydium & More | BlockSec Weekly

This weekly blockchain security report covers the period of June 8 to June 14, 2026, analyzing 4 notable incidents across Ethereum and Solana with total losses of approximately $5.98M. The highlighted events include Aztec Connect, where a missing input validation allowed the rollup's proof path and L1 settlement to reach inconsistent states, and Raydium, where a missing validation check on the legacy AMM v3 program allowed an attacker to manipulate the LP token redemption calculation and drain four pools. Both vulnerabilities had been live for years before exploitation. The report examines attack types including lack of input validation, integer overflow, and governance capture.

Zcash Orchard Soundness Bug Analysis | BlockSec Weekly
Security Insights

Zcash Orchard Soundness Bug Analysis | BlockSec Weekly

During the week of June 1, 2026, a critical soundness vulnerability was publicly disclosed in Zcash's Orchard shielded pool circuit, caused by a missing equality constraint in the halo2 ECC scalar multiplication gadget that could have enabled undetectable counterfeiting of ZEC within the Orchard pool through double-spending. The vulnerability, which existed for over four years since Orchard's activation in May 2022, was discovered by an AI-assisted security audit and patched through an emergency network upgrade (NU6.2). This single-event report covers the technical root cause (under-constrained ZK circuit relation), the AI-assisted discovery by researcher Taylor Hornby using Anthropic's Opus 4.8 model, the emergency response timeline, and the broader implications for the ZKP ecosystem.

Best Security Auditor for Web3

Validate design, code, and business logic before launch. Aligned with the highest industry security standards.

BlockSec Audit