Core DAO Total Value Locked Falls to About $2 Million as b14g Dominates Ecosystem - Cryptonews.net

Core DAO's DeFi total value locked has shrunk to a few million dollars, with almost all of the remainder concentrated in a single protocol, b14g. The Bitcoin dual-staking layer accounts for most of the DeFi activity on $CORE, leaving the ecosystem highly exposed to problems at one project.

DefiLlama data as of November 1 put Core's total DeFi TVL at about $3.28 million, with b14g representing $2.81 million of that amount. This figure is far below levels seen in earlier periods, when the ecosystem had a total TVL of $353.61 million according to Reflexivity Research.

The b14g Exploit

The concentration became visible after an incident on October 31, when about 97 million CORE staked through b14g was withdrawn without authorization. b14g paused the affected contracts, stating that $BTC staked through the protocol was unaffected.

consensus, validators and staking contracts operated normally, and that CORE staked directly with validators or through other protocols was unaffected.

Core DAO said the network itself was not compromised and was working with b14g and exchange partners to trace and freeze the funds. The withdrawal request reportedly specified zero CORE tokens, which the staking code interpreted as a request to withdraw the entire amount held in each order.

Concentration Risk

The episode illustrates the trade-off in concentrated ecosystems. Because a single protocol supplies most of Core's DeFi TVL and a large share of its dual-staking flow, a flaw in that protocol affects the wider chain, not only its own users.

Network activity metrics tell a similar story. DefiLlama recorded chain fees paid of just $1,586 over 24 hours, pointing to very little economic activity. The CORE token fell 12% to an all-time low following the incident, with stolen tokens valued at roughly $1.47 million.

Recovery remains incomplete. Exchange partners froze around 9 million CORE, and an estimated 19.9 million CORE sat outside both the fork recovery and the reported freezes. While b14g's wider footprint is much larger than its presence on Core, with total TVL of about $312 million across chains, the incident has severely impacted the Core DAO ecosystem.