Crypto Hacks Drain Over $13M in Diverse Layer Attacks
A week of August 2026 was marked by at least five confirmed on-chain exploits that drained more than $13 million in verified direct losses from various crypto protocols. The attacks targeted a cross-chain liquidity protocol, a stablecoin bridge, a Bitcoin restaking Layer 1, a metaverse token's omnichain infrastructure, and a fixed-rate lending protocol's governance layer.
The week's most significant exploit was against the Maya Protocol, which lost $10.9 million of TVL (Total Value Locked) after an attacker chained six bugs inside a single transaction to mint tokens out of thin air. The CACAO token price dropped 89% within hours, and the network remained halted until August 21.
Other notable exploits included Allbridge's CCTP Router, which bled $191,000 in a one-month slow play; BounceBit, whose shutdown its entire Layer 1 after a $3 million authorization flaw was discovered; and The Sandbox Bridge Exploit, where an attacker commandeered LayerZero delegate authorization to mint 14.9 billion unbacked SAND tokens.