Aave Reviews $50.43M aEthUSDT-to-aEthAAVE Swap Loss, Plans Shield Safeguard Against High Price Impact

Aave published a post-incident review of a swap in which a user routed 50,432,688 aEthUSDT, worth about $50.43 million, through the CoW Swap router to acquire aEthAAVE, ChainCatcher reported. The trade executed in a market with insufficient liquidity, with CoW Swap returning a quote 99.9% below the expected market clearing price, which the user explicitly confirmed, while the Aave protocol itself remained unaffected as the swap occurred via the third-party CoW Swap service. Aave said the core problem was lack of liquidity rather than slippage, noting the order size far exceeded available depth and the adverse result stemmed from accepting the unfavorable quote rather than price movement during execution. To reduce similar high-risk outcomes, Aave will add Aave Shield to the Swap widget to block by default swaps with price impact over 25% unless users manually disable the protection, and plans to refund roughly $110,368 in transaction fees after verification, while the affected user has not yet contacted the team.