{"investigation":{"slug":"lendfme","entity_name":"Lendf.me","trust_score":30,"severity_base":null,"score_modifier":0,"confidence":0.82,"status":"published","content_type":"investigation","summary":"Lendf.me was a decentralized lending protocol built by dForce Network and launched in September 2019 as a fork of Compound v1. On April 19, 2020, an attacker exploited a reentrancy vulnerability involving ERC-777 tokens to drain approximately $25.2 million from the protocol — at the time representing 99.95% of its total value locked. The attacker returned nearly all funds within two days after inadvertently exposing identifying metadata, and the original Lendf.me contract was permanently deprecated following the incident.","sections":[{"content":"Lendf.me was a DeFi money market protocol developed by dForce Network, a China-based open finance project founded by Mindao Yang in late 2018. Lendf.me launched in September 2019 and was modeled after Compound v1's open-source smart contract code. By early 2020 it had grown to become one of the largest DeFi lending markets in China and among the top protocols by total value locked globally, according to DeFi Pulse rankings of the time. The protocol allowed users to supply and borrow a range of Ethereum-based assets, with interest rates set algorithmically. dForce Network, the parent entity, is registered in Singapore and raised a $1.5 million strategic funding round led by Multicoin Capital with participation from Huobi Capital and China Merchants Bank International (CMBI), announced on April 14, 2020 — just five days before the hack occurred.","heading":"Overview","sources":[{"url":"https://decrypt.co/26033/dforce-lendfme-defi-hack-25m","name":"decrypt.co","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/04/14/chinese-defi-platform-dforce-raises-15m-from-multicoin-huobi-capital","name":"coindesk.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://medium.com/dforcenet/a-summary-of-the-attack-on-lendf-me-on-april-19-2020-e2f1c5d96640","name":"medium.com","type":"other","credibility":3}],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"On April 19, 2020 at approximately 12:58 AM UTC (9:00 PM EST April 18), an attacker exploited a reentrancy vulnerability in Lendf.me to drain approximately $25.2 million in assets from 12 separate lending pools, representing 99.95% of the protocol's total value locked. The root cause was the interaction between Lendf.me's supply/withdraw logic and imBTC, an ERC-777 standard token that enables callbacks to token senders and recipients on transfer. Lendf.me had enabled imBTC as a collateral asset without accounting for the ERC-777 callback mechanism. The attack proceeded as follows: the attacker made an initial small deposit of imBTC via the supply() function; on a second supply() call, before the function completed its internal balance updates, the ERC-777 tokensToSend() hook triggered the attacker's contract, which called withdraw() to extract the previously deposited imBTC; when execution returned to supply(), the contract updated the balance using a cached local variable, effectively restoring the withdrawn amount and inflating the attacker's recorded collateral position. By repeating this cycle, the attacker's on-chain collateral record was inflated to over $25 million while the actual imBTC had already been returned to the attacker's wallet. The attacker then used this fraudulent collateral balance to borrow all available assets across all 12 liquidity pools. A related but smaller reentrancy attack on a Uniswap imBTC pool occurred in the same period, resulting in roughly $300,000 in losses. Criticism emerged after the incident that Lendf.me had copied Compound v1 code — with the word 'Compound' reportedly appearing four times in the deployed contract — without fully understanding or auditing the security implications of supporting non-standard ERC-777 tokens.","heading":"Incident Details","sources":[{"url":"https://peckshield.medium.com/uniswap-lendf-me-hacks-root-cause-and-loss-analysis-50f3263dcc09","name":"peckshield.medium.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://slowmist.medium.com/slowmist-details-of-lendf-me-reentrancy-attack-3e168ab5f2b1","name":"slowmist.medium.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://quantstamp.com/blog/how-the-dforce-hacker-used-reentrancy-to-steal-25-million","name":"quantstamp.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://valid.network/post/the-reentrancy-strikes-again-the-case-of-lendf-me","name":"valid.network","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/dforce-hacker-returns-stolen-money-as-criticism-of-the-project-continues","name":"cointelegraph.com","type":"other","credibility":3}],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"Security firms SlowMist and PeckShield published analyses identifying the primary attacker externally owned account (EOA) as 0xa9bf70a420d364e923c74448d9d817d3f2a77822 and the deployed attack contract as 0x538359785a8d5ab1a741a0ba94f26a800759d91d. An example attack transaction hash documented by PeckShield is 0xae7d664bdfcc54220df4f18d339005c6faf6e62c9ca79c56387bc0389274363b. A secondary attack transaction documented by Quantstamp is 0x9743677ccf9a95f0a0521558d1bf853226f3a87c077d40cf3df73199ba211102. The attack occurred at or around Ethereum block height 9,899,681. The full asset breakdown of stolen funds, as analyzed by PeckShield, totaled approximately $24,696,616 and comprised: USDT 7,180,525.08, USDC 698,916.40, BUSD 480,787.89, PAX 587,014.60, TUSD 459,794.39, HUSD 432,162.91, USDx 510,868.16, CHAI 77,930.93, WETH 55,159.02, WBTC 9.01, HBTC 320.28, and imBTC 291.35. Following the exploit, the attacker swapped a significant portion of the stolen assets to ETH through decentralized exchanges including 1inch.exchange, ParaSwap, and Tokenlon. A communication transaction from dForce to the attacker was recorded on-chain at hash 0x481e8a7c1c39ad755fbae3f7cf030b4a10f94b875bff2829582244120a36ea9a. The attacker's identity was allegedly exposed after they connected to 1inch.exchange's servers without adequate anonymization, causing a CDN provider to log an IP address linked to a location in China; this metadata was subsequently obtained by Singapore law enforcement via subpoena.","heading":"On-Chain Evidence","sources":[{"url":"https://slowmist.medium.com/slowmist-details-of-lendf-me-reentrancy-attack-3e168ab5f2b1","name":"slowmist.medium.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://peckshield.medium.com/uniswap-lendf-me-hacks-root-cause-and-loss-analysis-50f3263dcc09","name":"peckshield.medium.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://quantstamp.com/blog/how-the-dforce-hacker-used-reentrancy-to-steal-25-million","name":"quantstamp.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://securityaffairs.com/101895/cyber-crime/uniswap-lendf-me-hacked.html","name":"securityaffairs.com","type":"other","credibility":3}],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"On April 20, 2020, the attacker began returning funds, allegedly after dForce communicated on-chain and law enforcement in Singapore obtained identifying metadata from the attacker's CDN server logs. On that date, approximately $2.79 million worth of assets were returned. By April 21, 2020, the attacker had returned nearly all remaining stolen funds. dForce moved the recovered assets to a dedicated Recovery Account and published a two-part resolution plan. Part I described an Asset Redistribution Plan in which suppliers were made whole by withdrawing assets through a recovery portal on a first-come, first-served basis; borrowers were given a seven-day window to repay outstanding loans or face collateral liquidation at market rates. The team reported that over 90% of assets were distributed to users within 24 hours of the recovery process opening, and that 100% of affected users were ultimately made whole. Part II, titled the 'Better Future' Proposal, announced an airdrop of 2,000,000 DF governance tokens to users affected by the hack, the creation of a dForce Secure Asset Fund for Users (dSAFU) seeded with 50,000,000 DF tokens from the dForce Foundation (with 10% of future protocol transaction fees directed to the fund), and a commitment to engage top-tier auditors and hire a Chief Risk Officer. The original Lendf.me smart contract was permanently deprecated. dForce also withdrew its police complaint filed with Singapore authorities after the funds were returned.","heading":"Funds Recovery","sources":[{"url":"https://medium.com/dforcenet/lendf-me-hack-resolution-part-i-asset-redistribution-plan-9cefee49f209","name":"medium.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://medium.com/dforcenet/lendf-me-resolution-part-ii-dforce-better-future-proposal-76a07b65ca24","name":"medium.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/63141/defi-dforce-attack-24-million-funds-return","name":"theblock.co","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://coingeek.com/dforce-hacker-returns-25m-stolen-funds/","name":"coingeek.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://cryptobriefing.com/the-dforce-hacker-is-returning-stolen-funds/","name":"cryptobriefing.com","type":"other","credibility":3}],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"dForce Network was founded by Mindao Yang in late 2018. Yang entered the cryptocurrency space in 2013 with Bitcoin and participated in Ethereum's 2014 ICO. Prior to founding dForce, he served as an Investment Director at Standard Chartered Principal Finance and subsequently at Hony Capital, the largest private equity firm in China, from 2015 to 2017. He also founded earlier ventures Blockpower and Hashingbot. Yang described dForce as 'a China home-grown open finance protocol' and positioned it as 'a global network of DeFi protocols with a Chinese Launchpad.' dForce maintains a Singapore corporate presence. The $1.5 million strategic funding round announced April 14, 2020 — five days before the hack — was led by Multicoin Capital with Huobi Capital and China Merchants Bank International (CMBI) as co-investors. Following the hack, Mindao Yang stated in public posts that his own personal assets were also stolen in the attack and that he accepted personal responsibility for the incident.","heading":"Team and Background","sources":[{"url":"https://decrypt.co/26069/exclusive-an-interview-with-dforce-founder-mindao-yang","name":"decrypt.co","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/04/14/chinese-defi-platform-dforce-raises-15m-from-multicoin-huobi-capital","name":"coindesk.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://medium.com/@mindao.yang/update-on-lendf-me-ee83f4380b70","name":"medium.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://medium.com/dforcenet/a-summary-of-the-attack-on-lendf-me-on-april-19-2020-e2f1c5d96640","name":"medium.com","type":"other","credibility":3}],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"The Lendf.me exploit illustrates several compounding risk factors that resulted in a near-total loss of user funds. First, the protocol's codebase was forked from Compound v1 without adequate independent security review; CoinTelegraph and others reported that the word 'Compound' appeared four times in the deployed contract, indicating the fork was superficial. Second, the team enabled imBTC — an ERC-777 token — as a collateral asset without understanding or testing the interaction between ERC-777 callbacks and the protocol's reentrancy-vulnerable supply/withdraw logic. Third, the protocol lacked an emergency pause mechanism at the time of the attack; the team paused contracts approximately one hour after the exploit began. Fourth, no prior comprehensive audit by a specialized smart contract security firm had been conducted before launch. The ERC-777 reentrancy vulnerability class was not novel: a similar attack had already been demonstrated on Uniswap v1's imBTC pool in the same attack sequence, and the general pattern of ERC-777/reentrancy incompatibility had been documented in security research prior to April 2020. Mitigating factors include the full return of user funds, the team's transparent public communication during the incident, and post-incident commitments including the dSAFU insurance fund and a Trail of Bits audit of the redesigned dForce Lending protocol published in March 2021. The original Lendf.me contract is permanently deprecated and no longer operational. ZachXBT has flagged this entity as a risk reference in the context of DeFi exploit history.","heading":"Risk Assessment","sources":[{"url":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/dforce-hacker-returns-stolen-money-as-criticism-of-the-project-continues","name":"cointelegraph.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://quantstamp.com/blog/how-the-dforce-hacker-used-reentrancy-to-steal-25-million","name":"quantstamp.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://valid.network/post/the-reentrancy-strikes-again-the-case-of-lendf-me","name":"valid.network","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://github.com/dforce-network/documents/blob/master/audit_report/Lending/dForceLending-Audit-Report-TrailofBits-Mar-2021.pdf","name":"github.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://medium.com/dforcenet/lendf-me-resolution-part-ii-dforce-better-future-proposal-76a07b65ca24","name":"medium.com","type":"other","credibility":3}],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"Following the April 19, 2020 exploit, dForce filed a police report with Singapore authorities, where the company is domiciled. Investigators were able to obtain the alleged attacker's IP address and associated metadata — including screen resolution, system language (en-US), and OS (macOS) — from a CDN provider after the attacker connected to 1inch.exchange without adequate anonymization. The data suggested the attacker was located in China. This law enforcement pressure is widely cited as a primary factor in the attacker's decision to return the stolen funds. After the funds were returned, dForce submitted a case withdrawal request to Singapore police, ending the formal investigation. The identity of the attacker has never been publicly confirmed. No charges were publicly filed and no regulatory body (such as the SEC or CFTC) has taken enforcement action related to this incident.","heading":"Regulatory and Law Enforcement Context","sources":[{"url":"https://www.americancryptoassociation.com/2020/04/20/dforce-hacker-attempts-to-negotiate-after-allegedly-leaking-his-identity/","name":"americancryptoassociation.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://www.newsbtc.com/2020/04/21/2-reasons-why-ethereum-defi-hacker-returned-25-million-in-hacked-funds/","name":"newsbtc.com","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://www.bitsofblocks.io/post/theft-and-giving-it-back-25m-stolen-and-returned-in-lendf-me-debacle","name":"bitsofblocks.io","type":"other","credibility":3},{"url":"https://quadrigainitiative.com/casestudy/dforcelendfmedefiprotocolbreached.php","name":"quadrigainitiative.com","type":"other","credibility":3}],"severity":"medium"}],"timeline":[{"date":"2018","event":"Mindao Yang founds dForce Network in late 2018 as a China-based open finance protocol.","source":"","date_original":"2018-01-01"},{"date":"2019-09","event":"Lendf.me lending protocol launches as a fork of Compound v1, initially supporting a limited set of Ethereum assets.","source":"","date_original":"2019-09-01"},{"date":"2020-04-14","event":"dForce announces a $1.5 million strategic funding round led by Multicoin Capital, with Huobi Capital and CMBI participating.","source":""},{"date":"2020-04-19","event":"At approximately 12:58 AM UTC, attacker (EOA: 0xa9bf70a420d364e923c74448d9d817d3f2a77822) begins exploiting the ERC-777 reentrancy vulnerability. By 9:15 AM UTC+8, dForce discovers the attack. Lendf.me contracts are paused approximately one hour after the exploit begins. Approximately $25.2 million (~99.95% of TVL) is drained across 12 liquidity pools.","source":""},{"date":"2020-04-20","event":"dForce files a police report with Singapore authorities. The attacker's identifying metadata — including IP address and device fingerprint — is obtained from a CDN provider via subpoena. The attacker returns approximately $2.79 million as a first partial repayment.","source":""},{"date":"2020-04-21","event":"The attacker returns the remaining stolen funds, completing near-total restitution. dForce opens its Asset Recovery System for user withdrawals.","source":""},{"date":"2020-04-27","event":"dForce reports that over 90% of recovered assets have been redistributed to users and that 100% of affected users will be made whole.","source":""},{"date":"2020-05","event":"dForce publishes the 'Better Future' Proposal announcing 2,000,000 DF token airdrop to hack-affected users, creation of the dSAFU insurance fund with 50,000,000 DF tokens, and security improvement commitments. The original Lendf.me contract is permanently deprecated.","source":"","date_original":"2020-05-01"},{"date":"2021-03","event":"Trail of Bits publishes a security audit of the redesigned dForce Lending protocol, reflecting post-incident security improvements.","source":"","date_original":"2021-03-01"}],"sources_used":[{"url":"https://decrypt.co/26033/dforce-lendfme-defi-hack-25m","name":"decrypt.co","type":"other","archive_url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20260610094119/https://decrypt.co/26033/dforce-lendfme-defi-hack-25m","credibility":3,"archive_timestamp":"2026-06-10T09:41:19+00:00"},{"url":"https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/04/14/chinese-defi-platform-dforce-raises-15m-from-multicoin-huobi-capital","name":"coindesk.com","type":"other","archive_url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20260412133143/https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/04/14/chinese-defi-platform-dforce-raises-15m-from-multicoin-huobi-capital","credibility":3,"archive_timestamp":"2026-04-12T13:31:43+00:00"},{"url":"https://medium.com/dforcenet/a-summary-of-the-attack-on-lendf-me-on-april-19-2020-e2f1c5d96640","name":"medium.com","type":"other","archive_url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20250927013347/https://medium.com/dforcenet/a-summary-of-the-attack-on-lendf-me-on-april-19-2020-e2f1c5d96640","credibility":3,"archive_timestamp":"2025-09-27T01:33:47+00:00"},{"url":"https://peckshield.medium.com/uniswap-lendf-me-hacks-root-cause-and-loss-analysis-50f3263dcc09","name":"peckshield.medium.com","type":"other","archive_url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20251013120642/https://peckshield.medium.com/uniswap-lendf-me-hacks-root-cause-and-loss-analysis-50f3263dcc09","credibility":3,"archive_timestamp":"2025-10-13T12:06:42+00:00"},{"url":"https://slowmist.medium.com/slowmist-details-of-lendf-me-reentrancy-attack-3e168ab5f2b1","name":"slowmist.medium.com","type":"other","archive_url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20260322055924/https://slowmist.medium.com/slowmist-details-of-lendf-me-reentrancy-attack-3e168ab5f2b1","credibility":3,"archive_timestamp":"2026-03-22T05:59:24+00:00"},{"url":"https://quantstamp.com/blog/how-the-dforce-hacker-used-reentrancy-to-steal-25-million","name":"quantstamp.com","type":"other","archive_url":null,"credibility":3,"archive_timestamp":null},{"url":"https://valid.network/post/the-reentrancy-strikes-again-the-case-of-lendf-me","name":"valid.network","type":"other","archive_url":null,"credibility":3,"archive_error":"error:invalid-host-resolution","archive_status":"unarchivable","archive_timestamp":null},{"url":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/dforce-hacker-returns-stolen-money-as-criticism-of-the-project-continues","name":"cointelegraph.com","type":"other","archive_url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20260417053329/https://cointelegraph.com/news/dforce-hacker-returns-stolen-money-as-criticism-of-the-project-continues","credibility":3,"archive_timestamp":"2026-04-17T05:33:29+00:00"},{"url":"https://securityaffairs.com/101895/cyber-crime/uniswap-lendf-me-hacked.html","name":"securityaffairs.com","type":"other","archive_url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20260511172431/https://securityaffairs.com/101895/cyber-crime/uniswap-lendf-me-hacked.html","credibility":3,"archive_timestamp":"2026-05-11T17:24:31+00:00"},{"url":"https://medium.com/dforcenet/lendf-me-hack-resolution-part-i-asset-redistribution-plan-9cefee49f209","name":"medium.com","type":"other","archive_url":null,"credibility":3,"archive_error":"error:no-request","archive_status":"unarchivable","archive_timestamp":null},{"url":"https://medium.com/dforcenet/lendf-me-resolution-part-ii-dforce-better-future-proposal-76a07b65ca24","name":"medium.com","type":"other","archive_url":null,"credibility":3,"archive_error":"error:no-request","archive_status":"unarchivable","archive_timestamp":null},{"url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/63141/defi-dforce-attack-24-million-funds-return","name":"theblock.co","type":"other","archive_url":null,"credibility":3,"archive_error":"error:no-request","archive_status":"unarchivable","archive_timestamp":null},{"url":"https://coingeek.com/dforce-hacker-returns-25m-stolen-funds/","name":"coingeek.com","type":"other","archive_url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20251108162900/https://coingeek.com/dforce-hacker-returns-25m-stolen-funds/","credibility":3,"archive_timestamp":"2025-11-08T16:29:00+00:00"},{"url":"https://cryptobriefing.com/the-dforce-hacker-is-returning-stolen-funds/","name":"cryptobriefing.com","type":"other","archive_url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20251205182731/https://cryptobriefing.com/the-dforce-hacker-is-returning-stolen-funds/","credibility":3,"archive_timestamp":"2025-12-05T18:27:31+00:00"},{"url":"https://decrypt.co/26069/exclusive-an-interview-with-dforce-founder-mindao-yang","name":"decrypt.co","type":"other","archive_url":"http://web.archive.org/web/20260125035304/https://decrypt.co/26069/exclusive-an-interview-with-dforce-founder-mindao-yang","credibility":3,"archive_timestamp":"2026-01-25T03:53:04+00:00"},{"url":"https://medium.com/@mindao.yang/update-on-lendf-me-ee83f4380b70","name":"medium.com","type":"other","archive_url":null,"credibility":3,"archive_error":"error:no-request","archive_status":"unarchivable","archive_timestamp":null},{"url":"https://github.com/dforce-network/docum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