DeFi Protocol Stream Finance announced that it has paused all withdrawals and deposits after discovering that an external fund manager had reported losses of ~$93 million. The protocol posted a message on its official X account about the incident, detailing that it had roped in ‘law firm Perkins Coie LLP, to lead a comprehensive investigation into the incident’.
Users with pending deposits were explicitly told that they would not be processed currently and that the firm would be withdrawing all liquid assets while the investigation was underway. Management states that the loss stems from an external fund manager’s oversight or mismanagement of assets under Stream’s funds. The protocol has, however, refrained from labeling it as a smart-contract exploit, hack or theft.
Stream Finance acts swiftly
The firm said that it was engaging Keith Miller and Joseph Cutler of the law firm Perkins Coie LLP to conduct a forensic investigation. Stream Finance has indicated it will provide periodic updates, but has not given a timeline for resuming operations or a payout strategy for potentially impacted users.
Stream Finance is a DeFi protocol offering yield-generation strategies and capital-efficient vaults. Users deposit assets and receive derivative tokens such as XUSD that reflect participation in internal yield strategies. This can be through lending arbitrage, hedge market-making, or external management mandates.
Similar DeFi losses in the recent past
In October 2022, Mango Markets on the Solana chain lost about $117 million due to a price-manipulation exploit involving its native MNGO token. More recently, veteran DeFi protocol Balancer endured a multi-chain exploit that drained over $128 million, showing that even large, audited protocols are vulnerable. Stream Finance, as a platform, saw some rapid growth in 2025 by leaning on external fund managers when internal capacity was exceeded. However, this reliance on external parties may have led to the compromise.