By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless otherwise noted)
Programmable blockchain Solana’s SOL token has hit a five-week low after an exploit on one of its largest perpetual decentralized exchanges, Drift, highlighted that security risks extend beyond just smart contracts.
“If you’re building in DeFi, you need to control the surface area of your admin key. Not just the smart contracts,” said Omer Goldberg, founder of Chaos Labs, explaining what went wrong.
Goldberg explained in his X thread that the attacker compromised Drift’s admin key. This single key gave the attacker god-like control—like giving someone the master password to the entire safe deposit box with no limits or alarms.
Using this power, the attacker created a fake collateral market for a worthless token called CVT. They maxed out the risk parameters so the system treated hundreds of millions of this junk token as safe, high value security. In the same transaction, they switched the CVT price oracle to one they fully controlled, artificially pumped its value to sky-high levels, lifted the breakers on major assets (removed withdrawal limits) such as USDC, eETH and others, and drained over $250 million worth of tokens.
This also worked because Drift has a single shared liquidity pool that holds everyone’s security and trading funds, making for a seamless trading experience. (Imagine putting all your money in a single bank account and losing everything in a signature hack).
The real problem was not a bug in the code. It was the enormous “surface area” of that admin key, or the enormous damage a compromised signer could cause by rewriting protocol-wide risk rules, assigning oracles, and disabling security guards.
This is not the first time that a compromised privileged key has led to large losses. Just 10 days earlier, Resolv was drained of $25 million in tokens after attackers compromised a SERVICE_ROLE key.
So the message is clear: protocol security now depends as much on strong governance and key controls as it does on smart contract auditing.
As for markets, SOL’s nearly 3% drop to $78.30, its lowest since late February, is in line with the weakness in bitcoin ether (ETH), XRP (XRP) and the broader market, as represented by the CoinDesk 20 Index.
The culprit is once again President Donald Trump’s renewed threat against Iran, which has sent oil prices soaring. In the near term, these headlines may continue to lead movements in both traditional and crypto markets. Pay attention!
Read more: For analysis of today’s activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today
What to see
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
- Crypto
- Macro
- 2 April at 8.30am: US Initial Jobless Claims for week ending March 28 (previous 210,000)
- Earnings (Estimated based on FactSet data)
Token Events
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
- Governance votes and calls
- Unlock DAO votes to transfer 3 ETH to its Base multisig to exchange for USDC to cover current and future operating expenses. Voting ends April 2.
- Aavegotchi DAO votes to elect nine multi-sig signers, maintain a 5-of-9 signature limit, and set their quarterly compensation at $1,000 paid in GHST. Voting ends April 2.
- Arbitrum DAO votes across two proposals to transfer its code of conduct and procedures to living documents managed by OpCo and to upgrade to ArbOS 60 Elara. Voting ends April 2.
- Unlocks
- April 2: Athena (ENA) unlocks 2.18% of its circulating supply, worth $16.05 million.
- The token is launched
Conferences
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
Market movements
- BTC is down 2.53% as of 16 ET Wednesday at $66,459.24 (24 hours: -3.1%)
- ETH is down 4.66% to $2,043.77 (24 hours: -4.16%)
- CoinDesk 20 is down 3.59% to 1,891.30 (24 hours: -3.81%)
- Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 1bp to 2.77%
- BTC funding rate is at 0.0001% (0.0635% annualized) on Binance
- DXY is up 0.51% to 100.16
- Gold futures are down 3.56% at $4,641.60
- Silver futures are down 6.47% at $71.15
- The Nikkei 225 closed down 2.38% to 52,463.27
- The Hang Seng closed up 0.7% at 25,116.53
- The FTSE is down 0.08% at 10,356.15
- The Euro Stoxx 50 has fallen 1.61% to 5,640.26
- The DJIA closed Wednesday up 0.48% at 46,565.74
- The S&P 500 closed up 0.72% at 6,575.32
- The Nasdaq Composite closed up 1.16% at 21,840.95
- The S&P/TSX Composite closed up 0.58% at 32,957.95
- The S&P 40 Latin America closed up 0.95% at 3,658.43
- The US 10-year Treasury yield rose 5.1 bps to 4.372%
- E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 1.17% at 6,540.50
- E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 1.51% at 23,830.00
- E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.97% at 46,353.00
Bitcoin statistics
- BTC Dominance: 58.58% (+0.04%)
- Ether to bitcoin ratio: 0.03079 (-2.02%)
- Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 1,016 EH/s
- Hash price (spot): $31.48
- Total fees: 2.55 BTC / $174,507
- CME Futures open interest: 107,610 BTC
- BTC priced in gold: 14.4 oz.
- BTC vs Gold Market Cap: 4.44%
Technical Analysis
- The chart shows solana’s daily price swings in candlestick format with the Ichimoku cloud, a trend indicator, identified by the shaded area between the green and red lines.
- The token’s price has crossed back below the cloud, indicating a continuation of the broader decline. The pattern is similar to what we saw in mid-January, after which prices fell sharply.
- The Ichimoku cloud, invented by a Japanese journalist, is widely used to spot trend changes. Crossovers above and below the cloud are said to represent bullish and bearish shifts in trends.
Crypto stocks
- Coinbase Global (COIN): closed Monday at $172.99 (-0.93%), -3.17% at $167.50 in premarket
- Circle Internet (CRCL): closed at $90.74 (-4.89%), -1.59% at $89.30
- Galaxy Digital (GLXY): closed at $17.37 (-5.85%), -2.42% at $16.95
- Bullish (BLSH): closed at $35.07 (-1.85%), -2.79% at $34.09
- MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $8.04 (-1.47%), -2.74% at $7.82
- Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.55 (+1.54%), -4.94% at $11.93
- Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $15.30 (+2.27%), -3.66% at $14.74
- CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $8.62 (+1.29%), -3.38% at $8.33
- CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $34.86 (+0.11%)
- Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $6.68 (+2.77%)
Crypto Treasury Companies
- Strategy (MSTR): closed at $122.78 (-1.62%), -2.09% at $120.21
- Strive (ASST): closed at $10.16 (+1.40%), -3.44% at $9.81
- SharpLink Gaming (SBET): closed at $6.46 (+0.16%), -3.72% at $6.22
- Upexi (UPXI): closed at $0.99 (+0.20%), -5.16% at $0.94
- Lite Strategy (LITS): closed at $1.13 (-2.59%), -5.31% at $1.07
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs
- Daily net flow: -$173.7 million
- Cumulative net flows: $55.92 billion
- Total BTC holdings ~ 1.29M
Spot ETH ETFs
- Daily net flow: -$7.1 million
- Cumulative net flows: $11.58 billion
- Total ETH holdings ~ 5.71 million
Source: Farside Investors
While you were sleeping
Trump stokes market, political anxiety with vague Iran timeline (Bloomberg): The $31 trillion U.S. Treasury bond market posted its worst monthly performance since the end of 2024 in March, with bond investors worried that the war-driven rise in oil prices would ignite inflation.
‘We’re going to hit them hard’: Markets disappointed, oil back up after Trump speech (euronews): Oil rose sharply and European shares fell after Trump, in his first national address since the Iran war began, said the US would continue its attacks on Iran.
Gold, silver fall as investors doubt Trump’s exit plan (The Wall Street Journal): Gold and silver prices swung in the red along with industrial metals and stocks. Spot gold prices fell 3% to around $4,670 per troy ounce. Spot silver fell more than 5%.
Bitcoin’s financial boom is winding down as some companies and governments sell holdings (CoinDesk): Those who rushed into bitcoin over the past two years are now heading for exits and this is not a good sign for the market.
