SIR Trading Transient Caller Vulnerable Vault Contract

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SIR Trading Logo/Homepage

SIR.Trading was a DeFi platform offering a new take on leveraged investing, removing ongoing fees and volatility decay through a one-time fee model and virtual rebalancing. Users could take leveraged positions or provide liquidity, earning rewards through the SIR token system. On March 30, 2025, the platform was hacked for approximately $355,000 due to a vulnerability in Ethereum’s new transient storage feature. The attacker exploited a flaw in the vault contract’s verification logic, using a brute-forced vanity address to drain funds. Despite a public plea from the founder, the funds remain unrecovered, casting doubt on the project’s future.

About SIR Trading

"SIR brings a fresh approach to leveraged investing in DeFi, offering compounding returns without the usual drawbacks. Unlike traditional approaches to leverage, SIR does away with maintenance fees and removes volatility decay.

Users pay a fixed amount when they open or close a position, in contrast with many platforms that charge ongoing fees, eating into long-term returns."

SIR.TRADING introduces a novel approach to leveraged investing in decentralized finance (DeFi) through its protocol, Synthetics Implemented Right (SIR). This platform eliminates the common drawbacks associated with leverage, such as ongoing maintenance fees and volatility decay. Instead, users pay a one-time fee when opening or closing positions, allowing them to retain more profits in the long run. The system achieves consistent leverage by using internal liquidity pools and virtual rebalancing, removing the need for costly external transactions.

At the heart of the platform is the SIR token, a fee-generating asset with immutable issuance embedded into the protocol. Stakers are rewarded from the fees collected by the system, while liquidity providers receive ongoing distributions of SIR tokens—approximately 2.015 billion per year indefinitely. The protocol emphasizes trustlessness and permissionlessness, akin to platforms like Uniswap. Users can create vaults with specified token pairs and leverage ratios, and once the protocol exits beta, its smart contracts will be immutable, ensuring long-term reliability on Ethereum.

The SIR ecosystem divides users into two primary roles: Gentlemen and Apes. Gentlemen act as liquidity providers and are compensated with fees and SIR rewards. Their positions are represented by ERC-1155 tokens called TEA. Apes are the traders who take leveraged positions on chosen token pairs. They pay one-time fees for minting and burning their positions, which are held in the form of ERC-20 APE tokens that are fully transferable and usable across other protocols.

The development team consists of Xatarrer (founder and smart contract developer), Realtarpcity and Abstrucked (front-end developers), and MrLivingstream (UX/UI designer). The project also acknowledges @no_side666 for their contributions as a smart contract analyst. The successful presale phase raised 66,000 units (currency unspecified), with all contributions now viewable for transparency.

The Reality

This sections is included if a case involved deception or information that was unknown at the time. Examples include:

• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The SIR protocol suffered a devastating exploit, resulting in the loss of most of its funds to an attacker.

Key Event Timeline - SIR Trading Transient Caller Vulnerable Vault Contract

Date	Event	Description
March 30th, 2025 12:21:11 AM MDT	Exploit Transaction	The exploit transaction on SIR Trading.
March 30th, 2025 3:00:00 AM MDT	Decurity Analysis Tweet	Decurity analyzes the attack in a tweet.
March 30th, 2025 3:08:00 AM MDT	Xatarrer Posting Tweet	In an emotional and candid message, Xatarrer confirms that the SIR protocol has suffered a major exploit, resulting in the loss of most of its funds. He expresses deep regret and shock, apologizing to supporters and the team, acknowledging the years of effort invested in building the project. The tweet marks a somber moment for the community, as the future of the protocol hangs in uncertainty.

Technical Details

"Transient storage was marketed as a more gas-efficient solution, not a potential backdoor for hackers to waltz right in.

But here we are, with an attacker who didn’t simply exploit a coding flaw - they turned a bit of math into a master key, brute-forcing a vanity address that unlocked SIR Trading’s vault like it was theirs for the taking."

"What’s striking is that transient storage, introduced via EIP-1153 in the Dencun hard fork, is still a nascent feature. This may be one of the first real-world attacks exploiting its vulnerabilities, may signal further changes in attack trends."

"This is a clever attack. In the vulnerable contract Vault there is a uniswapV3SwapCallback function that uses transient storage to verify the caller. Specifically, it loads an address of a Uniswap pool from the slot 0x1 and checks that it matches msg.sender. It looks right at the first glance, however at the end of the execution uniswapV3SwapCallback stores the value of the variable amount at the same slot!

Since the value of amount can be controlled externally, one has to find such an amount that will point to a controllable address. So did the hacker: they bruteforced a vanity address 0x00000000001271551295307acc16ba1e7e0d4281 (amount=95759995883742311247042417521410689) and provided precise arguments to mint exactly this number of tokens. After that they directed the flow of the execution such that this amount is stored at the slot 0x1 to replace Uniswap pool address and called uniswapV3SwapCallback from the bruteforced contract deployed with CREATE2 to drain the Vault."

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost has been estimated at $355,000 USD.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

“Sorry. This is devastating news. I just came back asap from my kid’s training. I am in shock. Sorry to everyone. Investors, believers… I poured 4 years of my life. And now we just lost most of the funds to an attacker. I have no words.”

Ultimate Outcome

“If you want to discuss privately… SIR isn’t some VC-backed copy-paste DeFi project, but a completely new type of leverage primitive. It’s four years of late-night coding, $70k from friends and believers, and we grew to $400k TVL organically without any advertising. If you keep 100% of the funds, there is no chance for us to survive. Here is my proposal: keep $100k as a fair share for your critical bug find, and return the remaining… We’ll call it even. No legal games, no drama.”

Total Amount Recovered

The SIR protocol lost approximately $355,000 in a hack on March 30, 2025.

There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.

Ongoing Developments

The attacker routed the stolen funds through the Ethereum privacy protocol Railgun, making recovery efforts challenging. Despite a heartfelt appeal from founder Xatarrer urging the hacker to return a portion of the funds, the response remains uncertain.

Individual Prevention Policies

No specific policies for individual prevention have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as an individual, check our Prevention Policies for Individuals guide.

Platform Prevention Policies

Policies for platforms to take to prevent this situation have not yet been selected in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as a financial service, check our Prevention Policies for Platforms guide.

Regulatory Prevention Policies

No specific regulatory policies have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of regulatory policies that can prevent loss, check our Prevention Policies for Regulators guide.