KiloEX Decentralized Exchange Suffers $7 Million Loss Due to Oracle Manipulation Attack

The KiloEX decentralized exchange (DEX) has fallen victim to a sophisticated oracle exploit, resulting in escalating losses that have now reached $7 million. Security analysts report that attackers manipulated price feed data to drain funds from the platform’s liquidity pools. This incident highlights the ongoing vulnerabilities in DeFi systems, particularly around oracle reliability and smart contract security. The KiloEX team is currently investigating the breach and working on mitigation strategies while advising users to revoke affected contract permissions.

KiloEX KILO tokens crashed after the news of the exploit, erasing value for airdrop recipients. | Source: Coingecko

Hackers are targeting DeFi projects once again, after the GMX exploit at the end of March. Smart contract vulnerabilities and price determination may allow hackers to withdraw valuable assets. The project’s liquidity is provided by users seeking passive returns, making the exploit even more harmful for end users. 

KiloEX grew its activity just before the hack

KiloEX has been around since the 2023 bear market, spending most of its time in building and expanding its presence. In the past quarter, KiloEX increased its influence, volumes and value locked. Just before the hack, the DEX announced a liquidity boost event to trade some of the hottest BNB Smart Chain meme tokens. 

The DEX now carries $47.2M in total value, remaining a potentially valuable target for hackers to drain multiple pools. 

KiloEX doubled its volumes in the past day, carrying over $31.8M in activity. Over $22M of that volume is in the BTC/USDT perpetual futures pair, with a small selection of tokens on several chains. 

One of the sources of activity for KiloEX was its airdrop farming program. The DEX offered perpetual futures trading with up to 100X leverage. Current users complained that the hack erased the value earned from airdrops. 

I’ve been farming @KiloEx_perp for a year

Believed and invested in it because I love their concept so much

Spent about 500k dollars working on it to what?

My 65k dollars drop was stolen so there was nothing at all?

It’s just another disappointment…. pic.twitter.com/xtY8H91xNE

— ben.sol 🧩 (@elailegion) April 14, 2025

KiloEX expanded its activity at a time when perpetual DEX were drawing in more users. The volatile BTC market and the ability for high-leverage trading led to increased demand for perpetual DEX. KiloEX also settles all trades on-chain, meaning the exploiter could lock in gains immediately, but it has no ability to lock withdrawals. KiloEX is a no-KYC exchange, offering completely anonymous access to its trading pairs. 

KiloEX aimed to become a competitor to Hyperliquid and GMX, with up to 100X leverage on BTC, ETH, and BNB. The KiloEX DEX operates on a smaller scale, but it aims to copy the successful model. KiloEX raised just $750k through a mix of launchpool sales, IDO, and a strategic funding round. The project received support from YZi Labs and Manta Network, tapping the growing activity on BNB Smart Chain.

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