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Flashot: A Snapshot of Flash Loan Attack on DeFi Ecosystem

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  • Yixin Cao
  • Chuanwei Zou
  • Xianfeng Cheng

Abstract

Flash Loan attack can grab millions of dollars from decentralized vaults in one single transaction, drawing increasing attention from the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) players. It has also demonstrated an exciting opportunity that a huge wealth could be created by composing DeFi's building blocks and exploring the arbitrage change. However, a fundamental framework to study the field of DeFi has not yet reached a consensus and there's a lack of standard tools or languages to help better describe, design and improve the running processes of the infant DeFi systems, which naturally makes it harder to understand the basic principles behind the complexity of Flash Loan attacks. In this paper, we are the first to propose Flashot, a prototype that is able to transparently illustrate the precise asset flows intertwined with smart contracts in a standardized diagram for each Flash Loan event. Some use cases are shown and specifically, based on Flashot, we study a typical Pump and Arbitrage case and present in-depth economic explanations to the attacker's behaviors. Finally, we conclude the development trends of Flash Loan attacks and discuss the great impact on DeFi ecosystem brought by Flash Loan. We envision a brand new quantitative financial industry powered by highly efficient automatic risk and profit detection systems based on the blockchain.

Suggested Citation

  • Yixin Cao & Chuanwei Zou & Xianfeng Cheng, 2021. "Flashot: A Snapshot of Flash Loan Attack on DeFi Ecosystem," Papers 2102.00626, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2102.00626
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Sam M. Werner & Daniel Perez & Lewis Gudgeon & Ariah Klages-Mundt & Dominik Harz & William J. Knottenbelt, 2021. "SoK: Decentralized Finance (DeFi)," Papers 2101.08778, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2022.
    2. Chen, Yan & Bellavitis, Cristiano, 2020. "Blockchain disruption and decentralized finance: The rise of decentralized business models," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 13(C).
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    Cited by:

    1. Bhambhwani, Siddharth M. & Huang, Allen H., 2024. "Auditing decentralized finance," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(2).

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