Alpha Finance Lab
Summary
Alpha Finance Lab (later rebranded to Alpha Venture DAO, then Stella) is a DeFi protocol best known for its leveraged yield farming product Alpha Homora. On February 13, 2021, Alpha Homora V2 was exploited for approximately $37.5 million via a sophisticated attack that required insider knowledge of an unannounced smart contract, draining funds from its Iron Bank (Cream Finance) integration. By March 2023, the protocol had repaid less than 2% of the resulting $32 million debt to Iron Bank despite a formal repayment agreement, triggering a second crisis in which user funds were frozen.
Connected Entities
2 entities · 1 linked investigation- + 1 more
Connected Through
1 shared actor · 1 investigationDistinct actors this investigation shares with others — holders, traders, and named parties. Shared infrastructure (exchanges, pools) is excluded.
- ⌂Alpha Finance Labprotocolalso inAlpha Finance Lab·42
Timeline(11 events)
2020-10-08
ALPHA token launches on Binance Launchpad at $0.02, raising $2M USD from 8,736 winners.
2021-01-01
Iron Bank (protocol-to-protocol lending) is established as a spin-off of Cream Finance, enabling undercollateralized borrowing for whitelisted protocols including Alpha Homora.
2021-02-13
Alpha Homora V2 is exploited for approximately $37.5 million via nine transactions chaining four smart contract vulnerabilities, including an unannounced sUSD pool. Funds drained from Cream Finance's Iron Bank.
2021-02-13
Alpha Finance states they have 'a prime suspect' and 'already' know the likely identity of the attacker. No name is ever publicly disclosed.
2021-02-14
Joint repayment agreement announced: Alpha Homora commits to 20% of protocol fee reserves monthly toward Iron Bank debt; 50M ALPHA tokens locked as 2x collateral in time-locked escrow.
2021-04-09
OpenZeppelin completes post-remediation audit of Alpha Homora V2, finding zero critical and one high-severity issue.
2022-03-31
Alpha Finance Lab rebrands to Alpha Venture DAO, repositioning as a Web3 builder and decentralized venture DAO.
2023-03-01
Iron Bank freezes Alpha Homora user lending accounts after Alpha has repaid only ~$481K of $32.4M debt over two years. ALPHA token collateral worth approximately $6M against $32M debt.
2023-03-02
Outstanding Alpha Homora debt to Iron Bank confirmed at $31,947,429.
2023-03-05
Iron Bank deadline passes without resolution. Alpha Homora proposes Iron Bank retain ~$32M in user funds and return ~$8.7M excess.
2023-06-01
Alpha Venture DAO depositors vote to stop negotiating with Iron Bank and pursue legal action. Project rebrands again to Stella, launching on Arbitrum.
Decision Log
- hash: HwtZvgXT6jnFFmve2nHyVJ3b7QS7FYoXS8vaWhDLEkgc
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain and source URLs are archived via the Internet Archive.
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:59 AM
last updated: 5/22/2026, 4:05:31 AM
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