Amid the wave of increasing crypto hacks, bad actors have infiltrated Makina Finance (MakinaFi), a non-custodial, cross-chain DeFi execution engine, stealing over 1,299 Ethereum (ETH) worth approximately $4.13 million.
A major security breach on Makina Finance
According to on-chain investigator PeckShieldAlert, hackers have moved the stolen funds to two wallet addresses. The hackers reportedly executed the exploit using trading operations and flash loans across decentralized exchange (DEX) liquidity pools.
“The hacker was frontrun by MEV Builder,” read the X post by PeckShieldAlert. In detail, the MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) builder is a specialized bot that constructs blocks of transactions and extracts profit from transaction ordering.
However, what happened on Makina Finance is that hackers exploited a vulnerability on the DeFi platform, sent a transaction order, and drained nearly 1,299 ETH.
The MEV builder saw the hacker’s exploit transaction in the public mempool, copied the exploit logic, ordered a further transaction, and executed it before the real hacker captured the entire profit.
Although the MEV builder interfered in between the hacker’s exploitation process, bots have been well-known for executing both ethical and unethical trading practices. To make it clearer, several trading bots create fake demands after buying a huge amount of tokens.
In the wake of the exploit, MakinaFi executives have not responded to the hack. However, they mentioned an issue that appears to be isolated to the decentralized USD (DUSD) stablecoin liquidity pool on Curve DEX. Hackers stole Ethereum from MakinaFi’s pools, which would likely be from the DUSD Curve pool.
Will 2026 be a year of hacks?
As reported by Chainalysis, in 2025, crypto hacks exponentially climbed by 55%, reaching nearly $3.4 billion. Earlier this month, on-chain investigator ZachXBT reported that hackers drained hundreds of wallets on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains.
At the end of 2025, hackers attacked Balancer DeFi, Upbit crypto exchange, and Trust Wallet Chrome browser extension. The Bybit hack in February 2025 is widely considered one of the largest crypto hacks in industry’s history.
As the crypto industry continues to see new innovations, project launches, partnerships, and integrations, hackers are keeping up with technological advancements, devising their own ways to spot opportunities to drain millions.
