Cronos Halted as Tectonic Crypto Hack Drains $75M

Cronos Network halted block production after a Tectonic crypto hack affected an estimated $75 million in assets. Independent researcher Weilin Li initially estimated that about $66 million was affected, but later raised his estimate to approximately $75 million.

The hacker exploited TONIC, the governance token of Tectonic's decentralized lending protocol, which had a 20% collateral factor. The attacker inflated TONIC's price by roughly 100-fold within 20 minutes and deposited the tokens into Tectonic, along with about $5 million in USDC.

The hacker then borrowed other assets from Tectonic, including USDC, USDT, WBTC, WETH, and CRO. Researcher Awoo estimated that the attacker committed around $5.6 million of personal funds during the operation, while copycat traders later extracted roughly $2 million.

Crypto.com stated that its app and exchange remained operational during the Cronos Network halt, with CEO Kris Marszalek committing to publishing a full post-mortem after investigators complete their review.