Wanchain Offers Generous Bounty to Cardano Bridge Exploit Attacker

The Cardano-Wanchain bridge was compromised on July 20, 2026, resulting in an estimated $9 million to $13 million theft of NIGHT tokens. Wanchain quickly took the bridge offline and contacted blockchain analysis firms and exchanges to flag potential wallet addresses tied to the incident.

A postmortem report revealed that a signature reuse flaw in the bridge's TreasuryCheck validator allowed a small, legitimate withdrawal signature to authorize much larger transfers instead. This kind of validation gap is a known risk in cross-chain bridge design.

Wanchain has offered the attacker a 90/10 split deal, where they would return 90% of the stolen NIGHT tokens by August 6, 2026, and keep 10% as a white-hat bounty. This offer is on the generous end compared to past deals.