Concentrated liquidity tick manipulation drained $10M from DEX pools
On June 6, 2026, Ambient DEX was exploited for $10 million through concentrated liquidity manipulation. The attacker exploited a vulnerability in tick boundary calculations within the concentrated liquidity AMM. By executing a series of precisely calculated swaps near tick boundaries, the attacker manipulated the pool's perception of liquidity depth, allowing them to extract more value than they deposited. The exploit required deep understanding of the AMM mathematics and was executed across multiple pools simultaneously.
Stolen stablecoins were swapped for ETH and deposited into Tornado Cash. The attacker used multiple wallets to execute the exploit simultaneously, then consolidated proceeds before mixing. A portion was bridged to Bitcoin via THORChain. The mathematical sophistication of the exploit suggested an attacker with significant DeFi expertise.