Bunni DEX Shuts Down After $8.4M Exploit

Highlights:

• Bunni DEX shuts down operations after failing to recover from a devastating $8.4 million loss in September.
• The DEX platform will allow users to continue withdrawing their assets, pending new directives on the withdrawal actions.
• The exchange also plans to distribute its remaining treasury assets to BUNNI, LIT, and veBUNNI holders.

Bunni, a Decentralized Exchange (DEX), has officially shut down after failing to recover from a devastating $8.4 million exploit in early September. The DEX platform announced the decision in a tweet on October 23, citing a lack of financial and technical resources required to stage a relaunch.

According to the X post, the trading platform will need to pay six to seven figures in audits and continuous monitoring expenses for a potential relaunch. “It’d also take months of development & BD effort just to get Bunni back to where it was before the exploit, which we cannot afford. Thus, we have decided it’s best to shut down Bunni,” the DEX platform added.

NEWS: @bunni_xyz to shut down following the $8.4M exploit it experienced last month. https://t.co/jU3PGb3b64 pic.twitter.com/c9LQHJdB6m

— CoinGecko (@coingecko) October 23, 2025

Withdrawal Options Remain Functional as Bunni DEX Shuts Down

Despite the shutdown, Bunni said it will allow users to withdraw their assets from the platform’s website until further notice. The trading platform also disclosed plans to distribute its remaining treasury assets to BUNNI, LIT, and veBUNNI holders. The exchange noted that this distribution will be based on a forthcoming snapshot.

However, distribution details await legal validation, and team members will be excluded from receiving funds. As part of efforts to preserve its technological contributions to DeFi, the exchange relicensed its Bunni v2 smart contracts from BUSL to MIT. With this, anyone can use the trading platform’s innovations, including Liquidity Distribution Functions (LDFs), surge fees, and autonomous rebalancing features.

Bunni’s team also expressed satisfaction in advancing the Automated Market Maker (AMM) technology. “We have pushed the AMM space forward by a generation, and it would be a shame if our efforts went to waste,” the exchange stated. Meanwhile, Bunni reiterated its commitment to continue working with law enforcement agencies to recover the stolen funds. Overall, the trading platform thanked its community members for their ongoing support in advancing DeFi technology. Despite the sudden shutdown, the exchange noted that its open-source technology will continue to benefit the ecosystem.

The Bunni DEX Crypto Exploit in Details

The attack happened in early September, targeting Bunni’s Ethereum and Unichain smart contracts. According to a Crypto2community publication, the hackers exploited a weakness in Bunni’s LDF, enabling them to withdraw funds through flash loan manipulation and rounding errors.

The DEX platform already lost $8.4 million, primarily in USDC and USDT, before its team began freezing contract operations to mitigate losses from the exploit. Despite placing a 10% bounty to encourage the scammer to return the funds, the exchange received no response.

Audits by Trail of Bits and Cyfrin later revealed the exploit stemmed from a logic-level flaw, not a coding or implementation error as initially assumed. Meanwhile, the hack incident collapsed Bunni’s total value locked (TVL) from over $60 million to nearly zero, as most trading activities halted.

Hello everyone, it is with saddened hearts that we announce the shutdown of Bunni.

The recent exploit has forced Bunni's growth to a halt, and in order to securely relaunch we'd need to pay 6-7 figures in audit & monitoring expenses alone – requiring capital that we simply don't…

— Bunni (@bunni_xyz) October 23, 2025

Crypto Thefts Dropped in September

Crypto2community reported a 22% drop in crypto thefts last month, with hackers stealing roughly $127 million across 20 major exploits. Despite the decline, attackers are using increasingly sophisticated methods to bypass security setups.

The biggest hack last month involved UXLink, resulting in losses valued between $44 million and $48 million. The hacker capitalized on the flaws in the protocol’s multisignature wallet to mint billions of unauthorized tokens. SwissBorg DEX was also a victim of a major attack in September, forfeiting $41 million from an attack that targeted its staking partner, Kiln.