Ostium Halts Trading After $18 Million Vault Exploit

Onchain perpetuals exchange Ostium paused all trading today after blockchain security firm Blockaid identified an exploit that drained roughly $18 million in USDC from the platform’s OLP vault on Arbitrum.

How the Exploit Worked

According to Blockaid’s initial findings, the attacker used a registered PriceUpKeep forwarder along with future-dated authorized oracle reports to fabricate trade profits, triggering an $18 million USDC payout from the vault.

Ostium confirmed the issue on social media, saying it had paused all trading and that its team was investigating. Onchain data reviewed separately shows the attacker has already begun converting portions of the stolen USDC into ether through Kyber Network before spreading the funds across multiple wallets.

The incident comes just weeks after Ostium announced a partnership with Nasdaq to power equity perpetual products using the exchange operator’s market data. At the time, Ostium said it had processed more than $50 billion in cumulative trading volume.

Backing and Funding History

Founded by Harvard alumni Kaledora Kiernan-Linn and Marco Antonio Ribeiro, Ostium has raised $27.8 million to date, including a $20 million Series A round co-led by General Catalyst and Jump Crypto, with additional backing from LocalGlobe, Susquehanna and Alliance DAO.