Case Study

Investigating the $200M Flash Loan DeFi Exploit with Agentic AI

November 24, 2025

Overview

The Euler Finance attack remains one of the most technically sophisticated exploits in the history of DeFi. Hackers abused flash-loan–powered recursive borrowing loops, artificially manipulated collateral ratios, and drained more than $200M in assets from the lending protocol.

This case study demonstrates how AnChain.AI’s Agentic AI stack—including :

that transforms a complex, smart contract exploit into a clear, actionable investigation workflow for compliance, security, and law-enforcement teams.

1. The Exploit: How Euler Lost $200M

Euler Finance’s smart-contract vulnerability enabled attackers to:

  • Use flash loans to repeatedly cycle borrowed assets.
  • Inflate their collateral value through recursive self-borrowing.
  • Trigger forced liquidations at manipulated asset prices.
  • Drain assets from the protocol in minutes.

This style of exploit creates thousands of noisy, intertwined transactions—impossible to manually analyze at investigative speed.

2. AnChain.AI Investigation Workflow

Step 1 —  Flash-Loan Tracing

Using Our Auto Trace AI, investigators immediately surface the 80% workload within one minute:

  • Entry points of flash-loan liquidity
  • Redirected assets across chains
  • Borrow–swap–repay loops

The model automatically expands relevant paths, deduplicates hops, and prunes false positives.

Outcome: Sub-minute understanding of how the exploit was executed technically and financially.

Step 2 — Visualizing Recursive Borrowing Patterns

Recursive borrowing is notoriously difficult to follow due to internal contract calls.

AutoTrace AI + MCP Server reconstruct:

  • Nested borrowing loops
  • Contract-to-contract interactions
  • Liquidation triggers
  • Unrealistic collateral inflation patterns

Outcome: A forensic, time-sequenced map of the exploit mechanics.

Step 3 — Entity Clustering of Attacker Infrastructure

With the Agentic AML API, investigators can automatically detect:

  • Primary exploit wallets
  • Supporting wallets and operational infrastructure
  • Cross-chain bridges, DEXes, and mixers used for obfuscation
  • Behavioral fingerprints (transfer cadence, toolkits, timing patterns)

Outcome: Separate the attacker cluster from noise, even when wallets attempt obfuscation.

Step 4 — Real-Time Screening & Risk Scoring

All addresses interacting with known exploit flows are automatically screened:

  • Risk tiers assigned using BEI™ intelligence
  • Mixer interactions flagged
  • Cross-chain laundering paths detected
  • Sanctions risks surfaced

Outcome: Exchanges, market makers, DAOs, and law enforcement get immediate alerts on contaminated flows.

3. Workflow Trusted By Customers From:

🏛️ Law Enforcement & Regulators – Leverage AI-driven tracing and entity clustering for seizure, prosecution, and evidence preservation.

🪙 DeFi Protocols & DAOs – Monitor smart contract exploits, flash-loan attacks, and protocol vulnerabilities with real-time tracing.

🏦 Crypto Exchanges & Market Makers – Track stolen funds across chains and flag compromised wallets interacting with your platform.

🧾 Blockchain Forensics & Investigators – Reconstruct exploit timelines, identify attacker clusters, and generate case-ready intelligence reports.

💼 Risk & Compliance Teams – Proactively detect anomalies, cross-chain laundering, and mixer usage linked to known exploit addresses.

4. Turning DeFi Complications into Actionable Intelligence

The Euler exploit involved recursive borrowing, flash-loan liquidity cycling, cross-chain laundering, and rapid obfuscation.
With traditional tools, analyzing such an attack can take weeks.

With AnChain.AI:

  • Minutes instead of weeks to map flows
  • Automated clustering reveals attacker networks
  • Instant screening protects exchanges and protocols
  • Agentic AI generates summaries, case files, and intelligence packages

Talk to the Expert Cryptocurrency Investigator

Schedule your investigation walkthrough today:

https://www.anchain.ai/demo