The #AaveSwapIncident occurred when a user attempted to swap $50 million worth of USDT for AAVE tokens on the Aave platform, but ended up receiving only 324 AAVE tokens worth approximately $36,000. The main reasons behind this incident are:
Illiquid Market:
The AAVE liquidity pool was extremely shallow, causing the trade to have a massive price impact, resulting in a 99.9% loss.
Inadequate Routing:
The CoW Protocol's routing system chose a liquidity pool with very limited depth, ignoring better alternatives.
Insufficient Slippage Protection:
The user didn't set a minimum output amount, and the warning system only required a checkbox confirmation.
MEV Bot Exploitation:
A Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot extracted approximately $9.9 million from the transaction using a sandwich attack.
Aave has announced plans to introduce "Aave Shield" to block swaps with high price impact, and will refund around $600,000 in fees collected from the transaction.