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CryptoHigh Impact•7 March 2026•

1 min read

Black Thursday Analysis: How a Bot Exploited MakerDAO to Acquire $8.32M in ETH for Free

Gold Bitcoin coin on a stack, surrounded by silver Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple coins. Background shows a large Bitcoin symbol, green upward arrows, red downward arrows, and blue market lines on an

Key Facts

1A bot acquired $8.32 million worth of ETH for free during the market crash on March 12, 2020.

A retrospective analysis of the "Black Thursday" event on March 12, 2020, highlights a significant systemic vulnerability in MakerDAO's liquidation process. During the extreme market crash, an automated bot managed to acquire $8.32 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) at zero cost. The incident was categorized not as a malicious hack, but as a failure of the protocol's auction mechanism under conditions of high volatility and network congestion. The bot exploited a 40-minute window where Ethereum network delays prevented competing bids from entering liquidation auctions. This lack of competition allowed "zero-bid" transactions to be processed, resulting in substantial capital losses for the protocol's collateral providers. The event remains a landmark case in DeFi history, exposing the risks of automated liquidation models and forcing major structural upgrades to the MakerDAO ecosystem.