The tweet was deleted by the author.
But we saved everything 🙂.
Crypto.com blockchain shut down after $75 million protocol hack
The Cronos blockchain was fully halted on Sunday following an attack on Tectonic, the largest lending protocol in its ecosystem. Preliminary losses are estimated at around $75 million.
Cronos was launched by Crypto.com in 2021 and remains closely tied to the exchange. The network is used to enable cheaper transactions across the company’s products, while CRO is considered one of the key assets in its ecosystem. Tectonic is the largest DeFi protocol on the network.
View post on X Loading...
The platform allows users to deposit cryptocurrencies as collateral and borrow other assets against them. One of the assets accepted as collateral was the project’s own TONIC token.
TONIC had around $1.34 million in liquidity and approximately $11,000 in daily trading volume. Tectonic’s documentation explicitly warned that low-liquidity assets are particularly vulnerable to price manipulation.
How the hack happened
Blockchain data suggests the attacker exploited precisely this weakness. TONIC’s price surged roughly 100-fold in about 20 minutes. The attacker then deposited the sharply appreciated tokens into Tectonic as collateral and borrowed other, more liquid assets against them.
TONIC had a 20% collateral factor. This meant that every $100 of token value recognized by the protocol could support roughly $20 in borrowing.
The impact was significant. According to DefiLlama, Tectonic had around $121.7 million locked in the protocol on August 26, accounting for nearly half of all capital deposited across Cronos DeFi. By Monday, that figure had fallen to roughly $3 million.
Cronos uses an architecture that limits the number of network validators to 100. This allowed participants to coordinate a full blockchain shutdown relatively quickly after the attack was detected.
Impact on the crypto market
Cronos is better described as a second-tier blockchain. In terms of capital locked in DeFi, it is well behind Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain and other major networks: before the attack, Cronos applications held around $250 million in total. As a result, the shutdown itself does not pose a systemic risk to the broader crypto market.
At the same time, Cronos cannot be considered insignificant. The network supports its own ecosystem of applications, decentralized exchanges and lending services used by Crypto.com customers. The incident therefore matters primarily as a test of the infrastructure behind a major crypto company: if an entire blockchain has to be shut down because of an attack on a single protocol, it inevitably raises questions about the network’s resilience and degree of decentralization.
In March, it was reported that Cronos would reissue 70 billion tokens for a strategic reserve.
This material may contain third-party opinions, none of the data and information on this webpage constitutes investment advice according to our Disclaimer. While we adhere to strict Editorial Integrity, this post may contain references to products from our partners.
Subscribe to TU news
Did you like the article?
Top News
Top 5 companies for you
United States
-
Afghanistan
-
Albania
-
Algeria
-
Angola
-
Argentina
-
Armenia
-
Australia
-
Austria
-
Azerbaijan
-
Bahamas
-
Bahrain
-
Bangladesh
-
Belarus
-
Belgium
-
Bolivia
-
Botswana
-
Brazil
-
Brunei
-
Bulgaria
-
Cambodia
-
Cameroon
-
Canada
-
Chile
-
China
-
Colombia
-
Congo
-
Costa Rica
-
Cote d'Ivoire
-
Croatia
-
Cuba
-
Cyprus
-
Czechia
-
DR Congo
-
Denmark
-
Dominican Republic
-
Ecuador
-
Egypt
-
El Salvador
-
Estonia
-
Eswatini
-
Ethiopia
-
Finland
-
France
-
Georgia
-
Germany
-
Ghana
-
Greece
-
Haiti
-
Hong Kong
-
Hungary
-
India
-
Indonesia
-
Iran, Islamic republic
-
Iraq
-
Ireland
-
Israel
-
Italy
-
Jamaica
-
Japan
-
Jordan
-
Kazakhstan
-
Kenya
-
Korea
-
Kuwait
-
Kyrgyzstan
-
Laos
-
Latvia
-
Lebanon
-
Lesotho
-
Libya
-
Lithuania
-
Luxembourg
-
Madagascar
-
Malaysia
-
Malta
-
Mauritius
-
Mexico
-
Moldova
-
Mongolia
-
Montenegro
-
Morocco
-
Mozambique
-
Myanmar
-
Namibia
-
Nepal
-
Netherlands
-
New Zealand
-
Nigeria
-
North Macedonia
-
Norway
-
Oman
-
Pakistan
-
Palestine
-
Panama
-
Papua New Guinea
-
Paraguay
-
Peru
-
Philippines
-
Poland
-
Portugal
-
Puerto Rico
-
Qatar
-
Reunion
-
Romania
-
Rwanda
-
Saudi Arabia
-
Serbia
-
Singapore
-
Slovakia
-
Slovenia
-
Somalia
-
South Africa
-
Spain
-
Sri Lanka
-
Sweden
-
Switzerland
-
Syria
-
Taiwan
-
Tajikistan
-
Tanzania
-
Thailand
-
Trinidad and Tobago
-
Tunisia
-
Turkey
-
UAE
-
Uganda
-
Ukraine
-
United Kingdom
-
United States
-
Uruguay
-
Uzbekistan
-
Venezuela
-
Vietnam
-
Yemen
-
Zambia
-
Zimbabwe
- Forex
- Crypto
Live News
