On March 22, 2026, two independent DeFi protocol security incidents were exposed one after another: Venus and Resolv were attacked, and the news of the protocol assets being arbitraged away spread quickly. This should have further undermined market confidence in DeFi security, but there was an unusual scene in on-chain fund flows — the two attackers chose not to diversify their cash-out but instead concentrated most of their profits into exchanging forETH. On one side, the protocols failed and token prices plummeted, while on the other side, nearly 28.56 million dollars worth of passive ETH buying surged on-chain, creating a more torn market sentiment. The security incidents should have triggered a sell-off of risk assets, but temporarily raised the spot demand for ETH, leading to a crucial question: was this nearly thirty million dollars of concentrated buying merely noise from the incidents, or could it potentially rewrite the trading rhythm and narrative focus of ETH in the short term?

Two attacks in succession: from protocol failure to token collapse

On March 22, 2026, Venus and Resolv were exposed for security incidents on the same day, occurring very closely in time, but there is currently no evidence to suggest a direct technical connection or the involvement of the same attack group; they can only be viewed as consecutive black swan events within the same market cycle. From the outcome perspective, both share the feature of the protocol being exploited, with funds quickly arbitraged away, albeit with differences in the asset structures involved and the subsequent market shock pathways.

In the Resolv-related ecosystem, the attack caused the protocol's related USR token to experience a liquidity crash. A significant portion of the attacker’s profit was in USR, and under the combined pressure of selling and panic, the USR price dropped by 88% from its peak, leaving about 36.74 million USR on-chain with a total market value of only about 2.04 million dollars. Overnight, what was once considerable paper profit was severely compressed, and a large amount of nominal earnings rapidly shrank in the face of real exchange capability.

In response to the security incident and the token price avalanche, the Fluid Protocol, as a key market for USRT, activated its emergency mechanism, directly suspending trading in the USR-related market. The goal of the trading suspension was very clear: to prevent further liquidity crashes and malicious price discovery, allowing the technical team time to investigate and fix the issue. For ordinary users, the inability to trade in the short term increased anxiety, but under the premise that the protocol risk had been confirmed, the majority of users' first reactions in the community were still to question the safety of their funds and the final redeemability of their assets, rather than continuing to gamble on bottoming out USR itself.

28.56 million dollars buy ETH

On-chain tracking showed that the flow of funds from the two attack incidents displayed a highly consistent pattern: after extracting funds from the attacked protocols, the attackers did not diversify into multiple assets or engage in complex hedging; instead, they quickly concentrated their arbitrage earnings into exchanging for ETH. According to a single data source, the Venus attacker exchanged part of the profits for 2,257.3 ETH, which at the time was approximately 4.72 million dollars; while the Resolv attacker took more aggressive actions, cumulatively exchanging about 11,437 ETH, corresponding to a market value of about 23.84 million dollars.

This meant that the two security incidents, which were not directly related, unexpectedly formed a unified flow of funds: approximately 13,694 ETH was passively bought in a single day, totaling approximately 28.56 million dollars. From a motivation standpoint, this was not a typical proactive allocation or trend-driven increase, but rather a forced concentrated reallocation decision made in a very short time window to lock in profits and hedge against the risk of devaluation of high-risk tokens in hand; its passive nature and highly concentrated time frame constituted the core of this “ETH buying engine” narrative.

The direct trigger for this result was the collapse of USR prices. After an 88% price drop, the attackers still held 36.74 million USR, which had a market value of only about 2.04 million dollars, significantly reduced compared to nominal value before the event. Continuing to hold or attempting to gradually sell USR would face the dual risks of insufficient liquidity and further price declines. In this environment, converting the remaining operable chips into ETH became the rational choice to preserve existing profits and hedge against tail risks; here, ETH was more like a “safe settlement asset” rather than a simple speculative target.

Security black swan combined with ETH positive factors

At the macro narrative level, the two security incidents primarily impacted the entire DeFi sector's trust foundation: protocols were breached, token prices plummeted, and trading was suspended; these scenes continuously reinforced the collective memory that “contracts cannot be fully trusted," causing some funds to further distance themselves from high-risk yield products. However, at the asset selection level, this pessimistic expectation regarding DeFi security sharply contrasted with the rise in passive demand for ETH spot — the intersection of attackers and safe-haven funds happened to concentrate on ETH.

From a market capitalization perspective, the 28.56 million dollars worth of concentrated buying was still a small ripple relative to ETH's overall market capitalization, and its marginal influence on prices held a high degree of uncertainty, making it difficult to be precisely dissected from the market. Especially in the absence of off-chain deep order books and over-the-counter trading data, we cannot quantify whether this round of passive buying was fully absorbed by the market or whether it created short-term price support. Therefore, attempting to explain all price fluctuations of ETH through a single security incident is neither rigorous nor likely to overestimate the market weight of the event itself.

Complicating matters, at the same time, off-chain geopolitical risks were also accumulating. The Iranian military statement mentioned in the research report cast a shadow over global risk asset sentiment, suppressing traditional market preferences for high-volatility assets, while the hedging demand against uncertainties began to rise. In this macro context, some crypto funds might withdraw from higher leverage and more complex DeFi protocols, opting instead for assets like ETH that have deeper liquidity and more mature narratives as central positions — security black swans and geopolitical tensions jointly propelled a structural migration of “distancing from protocols and moving closer to underlying assets.”

Fluid limit mechanism triggered: risk control and public pressure

In specific responses, the automatic limit mechanism of Fluid Protocol played a not very prominent but extremely crucial role in this incident. The design intent of the limit mechanism is to automatically restrict the trading scale and speed of specific assets when abnormal fluctuations or potential attacks are triggered, preventing single-point risks from amplifying into systemic crashes in a very short time. The suspension and limit trigger in the USR market on Fluid objectively suppressed larger-scale panic sell-offs and chain liquidations, buying time for the entire ecosystem.

In terms of external communication, Fluid chose to emphasize a safety-first attitude. Its official statement clearly stated: “User funds and protocol security are the top priority”, interpreting the trading suspension and limit trigger as active defense rather than a forced halt, attempting to stabilize the trust of existing users in the platform's risk management capabilities at the first moment. Meanwhile, the team also stated “that a post-event analysis report will be released after the investigation is completed”, promising to disclose more details later, striking a balance between transparency and risk communication—neither releasing unverified information prematurely nor allowing outsiders to mistakenly think the project is attempting to cover up issues.

This arrangement of rhythm is not only an objective need for the technical investigation process but also a means of managing public opinion against the current market environment: In the context of frequent security incidents in DeFi, excessive silence can be interpreted as incompetence or loss of control, while information overload may trigger secondary panic. Through the automatic triggering of the limit mechanism and subsequent written review, Fluid attempts to present a model of “explainable processes and traceable responsibilities” to mitigate the impact of future similar events on itself and the industry.

Hackers, protocols, and retail investors: multi-party game around ETH

Regarding these two incidents, on-chain fund migration motives exhibited clear differentiation among different participants. For the attackers, the primary goal was to quickly convert traceable “dirty assets” into more liquid and accepted mainstream assets; ETH served as the settlement and transfer role at this stage: on the one hand, it provided attackers with a larger exit space both on and off the market; on the other hand, it also amplified buying data for ETH in the short term. For the protocols, fund migration was more focused on risk control and self-rescue measures, including setting up limits, increasing collateral requirements, drawing from emergency funds, and even proactively converting some reserve assets into ETH to cope with potential redemption pressure and subsequent restart needs.

Ordinary users exhibited more passive behavior. Following confirmation of the security incidents, some users chose to withdraw funds from related protocols to transfer them to mainstream CEX or on-chain blue-chip assets, with ETH also being one of the most frequently appearing targets in this migration path. For participants with lower risk tolerance, exiting DeFi, reverting to ETH, or even directly converting back to fiat currency is an instinctive response to uncertainty; while for those with slightly higher risk tolerance, they may choose to buy discounted assets in a panic, but the total volume and sustainability of this group of funds often struggle to compete with safe-haven outflows.

From the overall market perspective, the new holding of 13,694 ETH by the attackers has three potential paths moving forward: first, short-term sell-off, gradually cashing out on-chain or over-the-counter, quickly reversing the current passive buying into selling pressure; second, continued hedging, using derivatives to hedge against price fluctuations, maintaining the size of ETH positions while reducing directional risk; third, long-term holding, betting that ETH will continue to strengthen in the next macro and industry cycle. These three paths correspond to completely different market impact trajectories, and it also indicates that this “buying engine” does not necessarily equate to long-term bullishness.

On an emotional level, the short-term panic selling pressure and the medium-term strengthening of recognition of ETH as a “relatively safe asset” are forming a subtle tension. On one hand, frequent security incidents remind the market that protocol risks and smart contract vulnerabilities still exist everywhere, and DeFi's high yields have never escaped the shackles of high risks; on the other hand, a considerable proportion of the high-risk tokens and long-tail assets that flow out during each black swan event ultimately coalesce into mainstream assets like ETH along their on-chain trajectory, continuously solidifying its position as a “risk hub” in the crypto system. This structural migration may be more worthy of long-term tracking than single price fluctuations.

From passive buying to long-term hidden dangers: this is not a “free benefit”

In summary, the security incidents of Venus and Resolv have, on one hand, dealt a heavy blow to the DeFi ecosystem in terms of sentiment and trust, forcing protocols and users to re-examine the boundaries of contract security and risk control systems; on the other hand, the migration path of the attack funds on-chain unexpectedly created approximately 28.56 million dollars of passive buying support for ETH in a short time. On the surface, this seems to form a bizarre picture of “DeFi being hacked while ETH benefits,” but what is truly highlighted behind it is the entire industry’s repricing of underlying assets and protocol-level risks.

It is crucial to emphasize that we currently cannot precisely quantify the real contribution of this round of concentrated buying to ETH prices, nor can we predict the intensity and rhythm of selling pressure that the attackers may release at some future point. The so-called “buying engine” is essentially a short-term side effect of the risk spillover process, rather than a price-driving factor that can be relied upon repeatedly. Viewing it as long-term bullishness not only ignores potential selling risks but also diminishes the long-term focus on the construction of security infrastructure.

Moving forward, three key clues worth observing are: first, how the Fluid's review report will dissect the risk propagation paths and the performance of the limit mechanism in this event, and whether it can provide a replicable defensive template for the industry; second, whether other protocols will expedite defense upgrades based on this, including iterations of permission management, multi-signature thresholds, risk control strategies, and insurance mechanisms; third, whether the market will begin to systematically price the chain of “security events → ETH passive buying → potential selling pressure” in future similar incidents, rather than simply seeing it as one-time noise.

For investors, it is essential to distinguish between the hierarchical differences between short-term capital movements and long-term safety infrastructural iterations. The former may be completely absorbed by the capital market within a few days or even hours, while the latter will repeatedly shape capital flows and asset pricing logic across multiple cycles. Treating security black swans as a “free benefit” to ETH is undoubtedly a misreading of the risk-reward relationship; what truly deserves to be taken seriously is whether the underlying security architecture becomes more robust after each event, and whether the risk premium between protocols and assets is more finely dissected and presented.

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