After the massive BNB Chain bridge hack in October 2022, the hacker was able to take out a massive position with the Venus Protocol defi lending project. They borrowed $150 million in stablecoins by putting up 900,000 BNB (~$244 million at the time).
The recent SEC lawsuit against Binance has caused the BNB token to plummet almost 25%, from $305 to ~$230. This puts the hacker’s position dangerously close to the liquidation threshold of $220, which could cause substantial impact on the market via cascading liquidations.
In November, BNB Chain passed a governance proposal giving the BNB Chain core team the ability to liquidate the position if it approached the liquidation threshold, meaning they could repay the debt in a more controlled manner that wouldn’t dump hundreds of thousands of BNB onto the market all at once.
On June 12 the Venus team tweeted a reminder: “BNBChain core team is ready to take over the $BNB position on Venus as planned if the BNB price hits the liquidation threshold. The liquidator address has prepared $30M already to refund the account loans with more to come if needed. No BNB will be dumped into the market and no shortfall is expected on Venus.”
This is not the only bad debt on the Venus platform, which has been described as “opaque” by Protos and has been accused of trying to hide some of its liabilities.
