$6 million out of a Base vault: what you can do now with your DeFi deposits

The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry a high degree of risk. Always conduct your own research.A vault on Base was drained of around 1,783 wstETH on October 4, 2026, about $6 million. The route ran through an entry on the permission list, not through a hole in Aave's protocol.An investment vault on the Ethereum layer Base was drained of around 1,783 wstETH on Sunday, October 4, 2026, worth about $6 million at the October 5 price. What mattered was not a hole in a protocol but an entry on a permission list: the attacker got a freshly deployed contract onto the vault's whitelist, borrowed interest-bearing deposits through it and redeemed them at Aave V3 for Ether derivatives. For an investor in Germany this is not a distant protocol accident. Anyone with funds sitting in a vault, a yield product or a lending strategy depends on exactly the permission structure that failed here. This piece sets out the sequence, names the places where control was missing, and sorts out what a German investor can look at in their own set-up. What happened in the Base vault on October 4: 1,783...