Cronos Hacked: Estimated Losses Reach $75 Million Amid Tectonic Protocol Breach

The Cronos blockchain has halted its network operations following a hack at its largest DeFi lending protocol, Tectonic. The attacker is believed to have driven up the price of TONIC, the governance token of Tectonic, by about 100-fold in roughly 20 minutes before using it as collateral to borrow large amounts of other crypto assets.

According to on-chain researcher Weilin Li, the attack position involved about 364.6 trillion TONIC, which is equivalent to a value of around $375 million. This implies that TONIC's price had to rise by at least 100-fold from its pre-attack low to facilitate the borrowing.

The estimated losses are around $75 million, with the attacker able to move only about $6 million to Ethereum before Cronos stopped the network. The remaining assets are still on Cronos, and it is unclear when the network will be restarted or how the attacker's assets will be handled.