Cronos Halts Blockchain After $75M Loss in Tectonic Exploit

Cronos' blockchain was halted after an exploit targeting Tectonic, a decentralized lending protocol, resulted in an estimated $75 million loss. The network was shut down on Sunday by Cronos after identifying the issue with Tectonic, with no restart timeline announced at publication.

According to researcher Weilin Li, the attacker exploited TONIC's 20% collateral factor and thin liquidity, pumping the governance token's price 100-fold within 20 minutes before borrowing other assets. This 'Mango-market style' pump-and-borrow attack left an estimated $60 million on Cronos.

Li initially estimated $66 million was affected but later identified another attacker-controlled address holding about $8 million, bringing the total loss to roughly $75 million. The attacker bridged about $6 million to Ethereum before the halt.