← Eminence Finance1 decision on this page
Audit log
Every state-changing event for Eminence Finance: moderation decisions on community submissions, plus corrections and updates from the news pipeline. URL-based decisions carry three independent witnesses — the original source, an Internet Archive snapshot taken at submission time, and a Solana memo signed by our publicly-disclosed publisher key.
- #1publishby system:backfill2026-05-25 17:56:55ZScore: ? → ? (no score change)anchoranchored
- chain
- ●mainnet-betaslot 422,117,229
- sig
5MXC98Kshf8G…GyxVPKVQexplorer ↗- hash
B35fYrCdu3iS…4EThTAwqsha256 → base58
verifying row…full verify ↗canonical bytes (7673 B) ▸
{"actor":"system:backfill","investigation_id":"559a7139-dc06-4802-92a3-f5fb605183ec","kind":"publish","page_slug":"eminence","published_at":"2026-05-25T17:56:55.341Z","sequence_num":1,"snapshot":{"content_type":"investigation","entity_name":"Eminence Finance","sections":[{"content":"","heading":"","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":3,"name":"https://decrypt.co/43203/hackers-drain-15-million-from-unreleased-yearn-finance-project","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/hacker-steals-15m-after-degens-pile-into-unreleased-yearn-finance-project","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://cryptopotato.com/yearn-finance-foray-into-gaming-multiverse-results-in-15-million-contract-hack/","type":"other","url":""}]},{"content":"","heading":"","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":3,"name":"https://rekt.news/eminence-rekt-in-prod","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://www.theblock.co/post/79061/yfi-eminence-defi-protocol-exploited","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://coinrivet.com/defi-investors-lose-15-million-in-eminence-flash-loan-exploit/","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://cryptobriefing.com/unaudited-crypto-gaming-platform-eminence-hacked-15-million/","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://etherscan.io/token/0x5ade7ae8660293f2ebfcefaba91d141d72d221e8","type":"other","url":""}]},{"content":"","heading":"","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":3,"name":"https://rekt.news/eminence-refund-do-or-dai/","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/10/01/defi-degens-hit-hard-by-eminence-exploit-will-be-partially-compensated","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://github.com/banteg/your-eminence","type":"other","url":""}]},{"content":"","heading":"","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":3,"name":"https://cryptobriefing.com/unaudited-crypto-gaming-platform-eminence-hacked-15-million/","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://www.vidma.io/blog/the-eminence-hack-lessons-in-defi-security-and-smart-contract-vulnerabilities","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://thedefiant.io/news/defi/andre-cronje-diehards-take-test-in-prod-over-the-edge-with-15m-hack","type":"other","url":""}]},{"content":"","heading":"","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":3,"name":"https://decrypt.co/43292/eminence-finance-exploit-leads-to-degen-soul-searching","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://thedefiant.io/news/defi/andre-cronje-diehards-take-test-in-prod-over-the-edge-with-15m-hack","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://www.theblock.co/post/81174/yfi-andre-cronje-clarifies-test-in-prod","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://fullycrypto.com/emn-investigation-lawsuit-raises-responsibility-issue","type":"other","url":""}]},{"content":"","heading":"","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":3,"name":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/group-raising-funds-to-sue-andre-cronje-over-emn-hack","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://cryptonews.net/news/legal/396498/","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://blockchain.news/news/yearn.finance-andre-cronje-sued-eminence-project-hack-death-threats","type":"other","url":""}]},{"content":"","heading":"","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":3,"name":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/yfi-s-andre-cronje-disappeared-after-death-threats-will-love-bring-him-back","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://blockchain.news/news/yearn.finance-andre-cronje-sued-eminence-project-hack-death-threats","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://www.dlnews.com/articles/web3/andre-cronje-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-defi-god/","type":"other","url":""}]},{"content":"","heading":"","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":3,"name":"https://www.dlnews.com/articles/web3/andre-cronje-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-defi-god/","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/12/08/andre-cronje-defi-expressionist","type":"other","url":""}]},{"content":"","heading":"","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":3,"name":"https://etherscan.io/token/0x5ade7ae8660293f2ebfcefaba91d141d72d221e8","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://rekt.news/eminence-rekt-in-prod","type":"other","url":""},{"credibility":3,"name":"https://cryptotaxcalculator.io/blog/eminence-finance/","type":"other","url":""}]}],"sources_used":[],"summary":"Eminence Finance (EMN) was an unfinished, unaudited NFT gaming protocol being developed by Yearn Finance founder Andre Cronje that was exploited on September 29, 2020, resulting in the theft of approximately $15 million in DAI from its bonding curve contracts. The contracts had never been officially announced or released to the public, but community members discovered and deposited into them after Cronje's cryptic tweets; the attacker returned $8 million to Cronje's deployer address but $7 million was never recovered. The incident became a defining case study in DeFi's 'degen' culture and the risks of deploying unaudited smart contracts to Ethereum mainnet.","timeline":[{"date":"2020-09-28","event":"Andre Cronje deploys Eminence Finance staging contracts to Ethereum mainnet for internal development. Cryptic tweet about 'a gaming multiverse' goes public, triggering community discovery of the contracts.","source":""},{"date":"2020-09-29","event":"Community members deposit approximately $15 million DAI into the unaudited EMN bonding curve contracts by interacting directly with the smart contracts (no front-end exists).","source":""},{"date":"2020-09-29","event":"At approximately 04:00 UTC, an unknown attacker uses a flash loan to exploit the EMN bonding curve mechanics, draining the full $15,015,533 DAI from the contracts.","source":""},{"date":"2020-09-29","event":"Approximately 11 minutes after the exploit, the attacker returns $8,000,000 DAI to Cronje's Yearn deployer contract address. Motive and attacker identity remain unknown.","source":""},{"date":"2020-09-29","event":"Cronje acknowledges the exploit and states the contracts were staging-only and not intended for public use. He announces the $8 million will be redistributed to affected users.","source":""},{"date":"2020-09-29","event":"Cronje goes silent on social media, later confirmed to be in response to death threats received following the exploit.","source":""},{"date":"2020-10-01","event":"Yearn developers banteg and Klim K publish distribution scripts and a snapshot for the refund. Refund site youreminence.finance goes live; $4 million claimed within 20 minutes.","source":""},{"date":"2020-10-09","event":"Banteg confirms Cronje has stopped tweeting due to death threats. The EMN Investigation group announces a crowdfund to finance a lawsuit against Cronje.","source":""},{"date":"2020-10-10","event":"Cronje resurfaces on Twitter: 'Still here. Still building. Nothing has changed.'","source":""},{"date":"2020-10-12","event":"Crowdfunding attempt for the EMN lawsuit fails to raise sufficient capital. No legal action proceeds.","source":""},{"date":"2020-10-01","event":"Cronje publishes clarification on the 'test in prod' statement, expressing regret over the phrase and stating it was intended as a caution, not a development methodology endorsement.","source":""},{"date":"2022-03-06","event":"Cronje announces retirement from DeFi, citing personal toll of public development. Eminence Finance is never relaunched.","source":""}]},"v":1}Verify offline (run on your own machine)python -m src.verify_decision 4a94356c-e0a1-4b5d-9c0a-df5219e4e2b6
How verification works. The “Row integrity” check above is computed in your browser — your machine recomputes the SHA-256 of the canonical bytes and compares against the stored hash. No avoid.net server can fake that check. The “full verify” link goes one level deeper: your browser fetches the on-chain transaction from a Solana RPC node and confirms the same hash is in the memo. If you don’t want to trust either avoid.net or the public RPC, run the CLI verifier on your own machine —
python -m src.verify_decision <event_id>.