Cronos Halted After Tectonic Exploit Triggers $75M Loss

Cronos Network halted block production on Sunday after Tectonic's lending protocol was exploited for around $75 million. The attack centered on TONIC, Tectonic's governance token, which surged roughly 100-fold in 20 minutes.

The manipulated price increase allowed the attacker to use TONIC as collateral and withdraw other assets from lending pools. According to onchain researcher Weilin Li, the attacker deposited the inflated position after manipulating TONIC's market price.

Before the attack, DefiLlama data showed Tectonic holding about $121.7 million in total value locked and $82.7 million in active loans. Only around $6 million of the exploited assets was transferred to Ethereum before Cronos Network stopped producing blocks.