CertiK flags $820K exploit draining NEM token’s PancakeSwap liquidity pool

Another BNB Chain token has learned that clever tokenomics can turn into an attacker’s playbook. On October 22, 2026, CertiK Alert flagged an exploit targeting the $NEM token, with losses estimated at approximately $820,000. The attack hit the USDT/NEM liquidity pool on PancakeSwap. The culprit was not a stolen key or a rogue insider, but a logic flaw baked into the token’s own smart contract. Security firm SlowMist corroborated the findings and put the damage at about $821,920. How the NEM exploit worked The vulnerable code sits in a contract called NemTokenV2. At its center is a mechanism named ‘pendingLpSellRecycle’, which was designed to track and process sells flowing into the liquidity pool. Per the findings, the contract made a basic accounting mistake. It treated any transfer of tokens into the liquidity pair as sell volume, without checking whether a real sale had actually taken place. The attacker repeatedly sent NEM tokens into the PancakeSwap pool, then skimmed the excess funds back out. Liquidity pools on PancakeSwap keep an internal record of their reserves. When the actual token balance sitting in the pool drifts above that recorded figure, the surplus can be pulled ...