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How much does it cost to break a blockchain price oracle?

Sebastian Müller, Nordine Moumeni, Adel Messaoudi

June 2, 2026

When traders attack automated market makers to distort on-chain price oracles, they must absorb trading losses to move prices. The authors derive formulas for the minimum loss required to manipulate prices by a given amount, then solve for optimal oracle designs that maximize attacker costs. Weighting pools by liquidity proves most resilient—but only up to a point; larger attacks may exploit different vulnerabilities.
Published as Cost of Manipulation in AMM-Based Oracles arXiv:2606.03548
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