The trade sent USDA prices spiking to roughly $1.26 on Cardano DEXs before retracing to around $1.04, highlighting severe slippage from pool illiquidity.

A dormant Cardano wallet executed a massive ADA-to-USDA swap on Minswap on November 16, triggering a catastrophic loss of about $6.2 million due to insufficient liquidity in the ADA/USDA pool.

The trader swapped around 14.45 million ADA (near $7.08 million) but received only about 847,694 USDA (roughly $847,000), securing a loss of over $6.2 million in minutes.

The episode underscores the importance of liquidity depth in DeFi, showing how a single large trade can cause meaningful market dislocations even when protocol execution works correctly.

The event serves as a cautionary tale about dormant capital meeting modern liquidity traps and the unforgiving nature of on-chain execution for large, fast trades.

Context notes that similar high-cost errors have occurred in prior market cycles, highlighting ongoing risks from illiquid pools and mispriced assets in crypto trading.

Anzens attributed the issue to low liquidity rather than a fundamental defect in the stablecoin, pledging efforts to improve liquidity.

The incident reinforces DeFi trading risks and the need for careful liquidity assessment, slippage protection, and prudent pool selection to avoid catastrophic losses.

The wallet had no prior USDA activity, raising questions about a misclick, ticker confusion, or assuming sufficient liquidity for a market-order style swap.

The event sparked broader Cardano community debate over slow DeFi progress, missing liquidity boosts, higher fees, and clearer tools to prevent similar mistakes.

Losses were driven by severe price slippage in a low-liquidity environment, illustrating how pool depth dramatically affects large trades.

The incident occurred amid wider concerns about stablecoin safety, including USDX depegging fears and a separate $680 million stablecoin scare, impacting trust in stablecoins.