Summary
Pickle Finance was an Ethereum-based DeFi yield aggregator launched in September 2020 that suffered a critical smart contract exploit on November 21, 2020, resulting in the theft of approximately 19.76 million DAI (roughly $19.7 million) from its pDAI PickleJar. The exploit, known as the 'Evil Jar Attack,' combined three design flaws in unaudited contract code and led to a 50% collapse in the PICKLE token price, with hack proceeds later laundered through Tornado Cash. The protocol subsequently merged with Yearn Finance but never meaningfully recovered; it officially announced its shutdown in 2025 with the UI disabled on October 1, 2025.
Connected Entities
2 entities · 1 linked investigation- + 5 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.
- ⌂Pickle Financeprotocolalso inPickle Finance·28
Timeline(15 events)
2020-09-01
Pickle Finance launches on Ethereum as a yield aggregator offering Pickle Jars and Pickle Farms.
2020-10-03
MixBytes completes a security audit of Pickle Finance smart contracts (ControllerV3 scope).
2020-10-20
Haechi completes a security audit of Pickle Finance smart contracts (ControllerV3 scope).
2020-10-23
ControllerV4 and the swapExactJarForJar function are deployed to production without undergoing a security audit.
2020-11-21
Attacker exploits three chained vulnerabilities in ControllerV4 and drains 19,759,355 DAI from the pDAI PickleJar in the Evil Jar Attack. PICKLE token falls approximately 50%.
2020-11-22
Pickle Finance executes an emergency timelock transaction at 15:15 UTC to revoke the exploited proxy logic from the Controller. White-hat team secures remaining $50 million in assets. Official postmortem published.
2020-11-24
Yearn Finance announces merger with Pickle Finance, characterized as DeFi's first M&A deal, without a prior community governance vote from either protocol.
2020-11-25
PICKLE token surges to approximately $27 on merger announcement.
2020-12-01
Cover Protocol approves Pickle Finance insurance claim; 282,035 DAI paid out, covering less than 2% of total losses.
2020-12-01
Developers 0xPenguin and BigBrainBriner depart Pickle Finance.
2021-02-09
PICKLE token reaches all-time high of approximately $34.35 before entering a sustained decline.
2021-01-01
Stolen funds from the November 2020 exploit are laundered through Tornado Cash in batches of 100 ETH; total of 1,800 ETH moved through the mixer according to PeckShieldAlert.
2022-01-01
Bear market conditions sharply reduce Pickle Finance TVL and user activity; the protocol struggles to compete in the saturated yield aggregator market.
2025-06-10
Pickle Finance takes a snapshot of PICKLE and DILL holders for treasury distribution eligibility (minimum 300 PICKLE required).
2025-10-01
Pickle Finance UI is disabled. Protocol officially sunsets after approximately five years. Remaining 170,280 USDC treasury distributed to eligible token holders.
Decision Log
- hash: EWLoPrSpYZSUdHTwo19Si4WRmX7cMwRBhc3B2gptBCL6
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: 5/26/2026, 3:49:50 AM
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