Major decentralized finance (DeFi) money market Compounds woes are worsening, with nearly $150 million worth of COMP now at risk due to a buggy upgrade to the protocol that went live last week.
On Thursday, Cointelegraph reported that a bug had resulted in between $70 million and $85 million worth of COMP tokens being mistakenly offered to users as rewards after an update intended to fix bugs and “split COMP rewards distribution” went awry.
Despite the reward distribution error being identified quickly, Compounds week-long delay in enacting new governance measures meant that the error will not be fixed until Thursda.
On Sunday, Compound founder Robert Leshner tweeted that 202,472.5 COMP (worth approximately $65 million) had been placed at risk after the protocols drip function was called for the first time in roughly two months.
The drip function makes tokens held in Compounds Reservoir available to users, with 0.5 COMP being accumulated by the Reservoir per block. Leshner noted that “the majority of COMP reserved for users” is held in the Reservoir.
SushiSwap developer Mudit Gupta took to social media to criticize the use of time-locks on governance, asserting that roughly 100 people were aware of the threat posed by the drip function since the bug was discovered on Thursday, but they were unable to act due to the time-delay on updating the protocol.
Gupta also warned of the risks associated with upgradable smart contracts, asserting they are inappropriate for “large [DeFi] primitives.”
“Ive come to see upgradability as more of a bug than a feature,” he added.
While Leshners tweet revealed that roughly 117,000 COMP worth $37.6 million had been returned to the protocol following the initial incident, Yearn.finance developer Banteg estimated that one-third of the funds that were placed at risk by the drip function had already been claimed by users at roughly 3:30 pm UTC on Sunday.
Banteg tallied the total value of COMP tokens placed at risk by the protocols bug to now be $147 million.
Despite the bugs initial identification causing the price of COMP to quickly crash 3% from $330 to $286 on Thursday, the token quickly recovered and traded above $340 on Saturday, according to CoinGecko.
COMP has shed 7% of its value since tagging a local high of $347.5 on Sunday, last changing hands for $322 at the time of writing.