An attacker drained roughly $6.7 million from TrustedVolumes, a market maker that routes trades for 1inch and other DEX aggregators, in an active exploit detected by security firm Blockaid on May 7, 2026. The stolen assets include 1,291 WETH, 16.93 WBTC, 206,282 USDT, and 1.27 million USDC, sitting across three Ethereum addresses. TrustedVolumes has confirmed the loss, said no 1inch infrastructure or user funds were compromised, and opened public negotiations with the attacker for a bounty-style return of the funds.
A market maker in DeFi is an entity that posts standing buy and sell quotes so retail traders on aggregators like 1inch can execute swaps at a known price. The breach hit a custom request-for-quote (RFQ) proxy contract that TrustedVolumes built and controls, not the 1inch protocol itself.
Key takeaways
- TrustedVolumes, a 1inch liquidity provider, lost about $6.7 million on May 7, 2026 after an attacker abused an unprotected function in its custom RFQ swap proxy.
- The attacker registered as an “Allowed Order Signer,” then used existing wallet approvals to pull WETH, WBTC, USDT, and USDC out of user-approved positions.
- 1inch says its smart contracts, backend, and user-held funds were untouched; the bug lived in TrustedVolumes’ own contract.
- Blockaid and researcher Vladimir Sobolev tied the exploit to the same actor behind the March 2025 1inch Fusion V1 attack, which ended in a negotiated return.
Published: May 9, 2026 09:00 UTC
What happened
Blockaid’s monitoring system flagged the exploit while it was still draining funds, posting an alert on May 7 that a TrustedVolumes-controlled contract was being emptied. The firm initially logged about $5.87 million in losses; TrustedVolumes later confirmed the figure had grown to roughly $6.7 million as the attacker continued to pull tokens.
The flaw sits in TrustedVolumes’ Custom RFQ Swap Proxy. According to Blockaid’s post-mortem and TrustedVolumes’ own statement, the contract included a public function for managing the whitelist of “authorized order signers” but did not gate it with permission checks. The attacker called that function, added their own address to the whitelist, then used previously granted token approvals to move user funds through the proxy.
Three wallets currently hold the stolen assets, with balances of roughly $3 million, $3 million, and $700,000, according to addresses tracked by on-chain investigators citing Blockaid data.
Why 1inch is not on the hook
1inch released a statement within hours saying its core smart contracts, backend services, and user funds were not affected. TrustedVolumes is one of several independent market makers, called resolvers, that supply liquidity to the 1inch Fusion auction system. Each resolver runs its own infrastructure and earns a spread on filled orders.
That distinction matters. 1inch’s aggregation router is one of the most-audited contracts in DeFi, and the bug was not in its routing logic. It was in code that TrustedVolumes wrote, deployed, and operated to participate in the resolver network. Users who interacted only with the standard 1inch interface did not see funds moved unless they had previously granted unlimited token approvals that TrustedVolumes’ proxy could draw on.
1inch co-founder Anton Bukov used the incident to argue for tighter resolver standards and safer lending primitives across DeFi, citing repeated failures in custom resolver contracts as a recurring weak point.
The same attacker, again
Blockaid and on-chain analyst Vladimir Sobolev independently linked the wallet pattern and contract interaction style to the actor who exploited 1inch Fusion V1 resolvers in March 2025 for about $5 million. That earlier incident ended with a negotiated bug bounty: the attacker returned most of the funds in exchange for a payment from 1inch and the affected resolvers.
TrustedVolumes appears to be running the same playbook. The team posted on-chain messages saying it is “open to constructive communication” and is willing to negotiate a “mutually acceptable solution” with the hacker, which in DeFi shorthand means a percentage of the take in exchange for the rest being returned and treated as a white-hat finding.
The wider trend
The TrustedVolumes hit is small relative to other 2026 incidents but consistent with the year’s pattern. DeFi protocols lost roughly $169 million across 34 hacks in Q1 2026, according to DefiLlama. April was worse: $606 million stolen in just 18 days, driven by the $285 million Drift Protocol breach attributed to a North Korean group and a $292 million drain from Kelp DAO’s LayerZero bridge integration. Year-to-date losses through mid-April topped $770 million.
Resolver and market-maker contracts are emerging as a recurring failure mode. Unlike core protocol code, these adjacent contracts often handle similar token volumes with less audit coverage and weaker permission models. Users granting token approvals to aggregator-linked addresses inherit the security posture of every resolver in the network, not just the audited router.
What to watch next
Three things will shape the fallout. First, whether TrustedVolumes lands a bounty deal in the next several days; if it does, most of the $6.7 million returns and the incident becomes a footnote. Second, whether 1inch tightens onboarding requirements for resolvers, including audit minimums and standardized permission patterns. Third, whether users who previously approved TrustedVolumes’ proxy revoke those approvals; on-chain tools like Revoke.cash let holders cancel old token allowances that would otherwise remain exploitable.
For now, the practical impact on the 1inch user experience is minimal. Affected approvals are limited to wallets that interacted with the specific TrustedVolumes proxy contract, and 1inch’s main routing continues to function normally.
FAQ
Was 1inch hacked?
No. 1inch’s own smart contracts, backend infrastructure, and user funds held by 1inch were not affected. The bug was in a custom proxy contract built and controlled by TrustedVolumes, an independent market maker that supplies liquidity through 1inch Fusion. 1inch confirmed the scope in a public statement on May 7.
How did the attacker drain the funds?
TrustedVolumes’ RFQ proxy contract included a public function to add addresses to its “authorized order signer” list. The function had no permission check, so the attacker added themselves, then used pre-existing token approvals from users to move WETH, WBTC, USDT, and USDC out of the proxy.
Should I revoke my 1inch approvals?
If you previously approved tokens to a TrustedVolumes-controlled contract address, revoking those allowances at a tool like Revoke.cash is a reasonable precaution. Standard 1inch router approvals were not implicated. Check the specific contract address you approved before deciding.
