Zabu Finance
Last changed 2026-10-10 · Score recalculated — Rescored under Scoring v2, the published formula (avoid.net/scoring): 52 → 50. Problems weighed by who is responsible: incidents the subject suffered −6.4, concerns that are not fraud −6.4, problems around the subject, caused by others −1.6; legitimacy credit long-running +8; no longer operating, so capped at 50; fact-check adjustments (+34) now shown as page reliability, not in the score. Version history →
Why this score
| Every page starts at | 65 |
| Concerns that are not fraud | -6.4 |
| Incidents it suffered (e.g. hacks) | -6.4 |
| Problems around it, caused by others | -1.6 |
| Long-running | +8 |
| Sum | 59 |
- No longer operating, so capped at 50.
Score: 50/100 (kept between 0 and 100)
How scoring works →Summary
Zabu Finance was an Avalanche-based yield farming protocol that suffered a $3.2 million flash loan exploit on September 12, 2021, marking what was widely described as the first major DeFi hack on the Avalanche blockchain. The vulnerability — a known deflationary token accounting flaw that had already been exploited on Polygon two months prior — drained the protocol's SPORE staking pool and caused the ZABU token to collapse from approximately $0.004 to near-zero. The protocol attempted a v2 token relaunch but has since gone effectively dormant, with a TVL of approximately $5,000 and a website SSL certificate that expired in August 2022.
Connected Entities
7 entities · 60 linked investigations- Zabu Finance→mentioned with→Coinbase(65%)
- Zabu Finance→mentioned with→Binance(65%)
- Zabu Finance→mentioned with→Avalanche(70%)
- Zabu Finance→mentioned with→ZachXBT(70%)
- Zabu Finance→mentioned with→Polygon(70%)
- ZachXBT→mentioned with→Binance(60%)
- Cointelegraph→mentioned with→ZachXBT(70%)
- Coinbase→mentioned with→ZachXBT(70%)
- Zabu Finance→mentioned with→Cointelegraph(65%)
- Polygon→mentioned with→Binance(70%)
- + 1 more
Timeline(6 events)
July 2021
PolyYeld Finance on Polygon is exploited using the identical deflationary-token accounting flaw; YELD token crashes to zero. The vulnerability is publicly documented but no widespread industry remediation follows.
12 September 2021
Zabu Finance is exploited on Avalanche via flash loan attack targeting SPORE pool's deflationary token accounting flaw. Attacker mints approximately 4.5 billion ZABU tokens and dumps them on Pangolin and Trader Joe DEXes, stealing approximately $3.2 million. ZABU price collapses ~99.5%.
13 September 2021
Zabu Finance team sets all farm rewards to zero and announces a snapshot-based v2 token recovery plan. PeckShield publicly states the bug 'happened many times before.' SlowMist and Knownsec publish technical analyses of the exploit.
13 September 2021
Zabu Finance burns approximately 93.12 million ZABU tokens (valued at ~$360,000 at time of burn) as part of recovery efforts.
22 August 2022
Zabu Finance website SSL certificate expires and is not renewed, indicating active development and maintenance has ceased.
May 2026
DefiLlama records Zabu Finance TVL at approximately $5,147. ZABU token is delisted from major exchanges. Protocol is effectively dormant.
Decision Log
- slot 457825073 · hash DXp6Q6qZe8Bq72YWEn7gwVLkvpBQ4KDMXC2ssT8bGo2T
- slot 455370087 · hash DEjXDcYnWHNHzcncWm7jqHabRLty5DZPyXG9DGbB9NQF
- slot 426700984 · hash BJhzW1or5ePLnJPX26MfHjDs12XqREgqkSqsUY5wpL3U
- slot 426700979 · hash GPiddwpJ4tSoZZEwvVUkqjmChYvwU6dewaZuMaZLq9HM
- slot 422768931 · hash ESj6Ji1tWy5TCGjU7pkibbS6mPnrDdUVCf5UC7QysZWB
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain (5 decisions). 8 of 9 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:54 AM
last updated: 10/10/2026, 6:49:55 PM
5 viewsavoid.net — verified advice for a post-truth world