Term Finance Recovers 62.5% of $1.6 Million Lost to Oracle Bug
1min read Term Finance, an Ethereum-based fixed-rate lending platform, has successfully recovered $1 million of the $1.6 million lost due to a misconfigured oracle that triggered erroneous liquidations in its Treehouse (tETH) market. The platform detailed the recovery efforts in a statement, noting that 223.197 ETH (approximately $400,000) was recaptured internally, while an additional 333 ETH (around $600,000) was secured through negotiations. The outstanding loss now stands at 362.03 ETH, valued at roughly $650,000 — a significant reduction from the initial impact of 918 ETH.
Term Finance clarified that the incident was not the result of a hack but rather a bug in an updated ETH oracle that caused the liquidation error. The team emphasized that no smart contracts were exploited and user funds were not directly targeted. However, details regarding the negotiation process for the returned funds remain undisclosed, and Term Finance has yet to provide further comment.
This oracle mishap adds to a growing list of recent vulnerabilities within the DeFi sector. Just days earlier, a Solana-based platform suffered a $5.8 million exploit, while a crypto exchange reported a $20 million loss after coordinated manipulation of a lesser-known token market. Additionally, another DeFi protocol fell victim to a flash loan attack over the weekend, resulting in losses exceeding $150,000. The protocol confirmed the breach, promising a detailed post-mortem once investigations conclude.
Recoveries in such cases remain inconsistent across the industry. The CEO of a major crypto exchange recently disclosed that following a $1.4 billion hack in February, nearly 28% of the stolen funds had become untraceable after being laundered through mixers and peer-to-peer platforms. Only a fraction (3.84%) has been successfully frozen. This highlights the challenges faced by platforms in recovering funds lost to exploits and hacks.
In the first three months of 2025, the crypto ecosystem lost a significant amount of funds across multiple incidents. Most of that was the result of only two hacks of two centralized exchanges. The total number of losses in the first quarter marks a significant increase compared to the previous year. Notably, experts assume that a notorious hacking group is behind the two largest attacks, stealing a substantial portion of the total losses.
