Skip to main content
AVOID.NET

Auto-generated score, not yet verified against the scoring model. Under review — treat as indicative, not a verdict.

anchored·rXLbxG…ncEi

Summary

Tapioca DAO is an omnichain DeFi money market built on LayerZero, offering a CDP stablecoin (USDO) and isolated lending markets (Singularity/Big Bang) across Arbitrum and BNB Chain. On October 18, 2024, the protocol suffered a critical security breach when a team member was targeted by a social engineering attack attributed to North Korea's Contagious Interview campaign, resulting in private key compromise, drainage of TAP token vesting contracts, and the minting of 5 quintillion USDO. Approximately $4.4–4.7 million was stolen before a partial counter-exploit recovered roughly 996 ETH (~$2.7 million), leaving the protocol treasury down approximately 45% and the TAP token price collapsed over 95%.

Connected Entities

12 entities · 60 linked investigations
Organizations
Serenity Shield32Arbitrum52BinanceConcentricNorth Korea Lazarus Group — H1 2026 Systematic Crypto Theft CampaignWormholeNexeraZachXBTWormhole BridgeTapioca DAO
Protocols
UniswapLayerZero — DVN Single-Verifier Configuration Risk
Relationships
  • Nexeramentioned withUniswap(65%)
  • Serenity Shieldmentioned withZachXBT(70%)
  • Nexeramentioned withBinance(60%)
  • Nexeramentioned withZachXBT(70%)
  • Nexeramentioned withConcentric(75%)
  • Serenity Shieldmentioned withConcentric(80%)
  • ZachXBTmentioned withBinance(60%)
  • Concentricmentioned withZachXBT(70%)
  • Concentricmentioned withArbitrum(75%)
  • Tapioca DAOmentioned withWormhole(70%)
  • + 25 more
Have evidence about Tapioca DAO?

Timeline(8 events)

18 October 2024

Tapioca DAO exploit begins at approximately 12:00 PM UK time. Attacker, having compromised 0xRektora's private keys via social engineering, triggers Emergency Rescue function on TAP vesting contract and withdraws approximately 28–30 million TAP tokens.

18 October 2024

TAP token price collapses 93–97%, from approximately $1.43 to under $0.05, as attacker swaps 30 million TAP for 591 ETH.

18 October 2024

Attacker compromises USDO stablecoin contract and mints approximately 5 quintillion USDO. Approximately $2.8 million USDC and $1.58 million ETH drained from USDO/USDC Uniswap pool. Stolen assets bridged from Arbitrum to BNB Chain via Stargate.

18 October 2024

Tapioca Foundation, with assistance from SEAL911 and EnigmaDarkLabs/Fuzzland, executes counter-exploit recovering 996 ETH (~$2.7 million) from attacker before it could be laundered.

18 October 2024

ZachXBT publicly links the Tapioca DAO attack to a broader pattern of DeFi hacks (Nexera, Concentric, Masa, SpaceCatch, Reach, Serenity Shield, MurAll) attributed to North Korean state-sponsored threat actors using Contagious Interview / fake job scam vectors.

19 October 2024

Tapioca DAO offers attacker a $1 million USDT white-hat bounty with a deadline of October 22, 2024, in exchange for returning approximately $3.7 million in stolen funds.

22 October 2024

Bounty deadline passes with no response from attacker. Tapioca DAO revokes the $1 million bounty offer.

22 October 2024

Tapioca Foundation publishes post-mortem on Mirror identifying attack as social engineering / Contagious Interview method and attributing it to a North Korean group. DAO treasury reported at approximately $4.2–4.8 million, down ~45% from pre-attack.

Provenance & Audit Trail

Decision Log

This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain (1 event).

model: claude-sonnet

generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:28 AM

last updated: 8/29/2026, 1:35:57 AM

6 views

avoid.net — verified advice for a post-truth world