Taiko's Bridge Just Trust-Fell Into Monday's $1.7M Exploit 🌉💸

Taiko, an Ethereum-equivalent rollup that settles activity to mainnet, lost roughly $1.7 million on Monday after an attacker compromised its chain-state verification mechanism, prompting the project to warn that "the security assumptions of all bridges deployed on Taiko can no longer be relied upon." Blockaid flagged the ongoing exploit in a post on X, and Taiko confirmed the compromise in a security notice while saying it is "actively coordinating with the Security Council and ecosystem partners" to contain the incident. The team also indicated it may pursue technical and legal action against the attacker.

On-chain data shared by Lookonchain shows the exploiter has already begun cashing out, moving 1.99 million TAIKO, worth about $189,000, to MEXC. According to Arkham, the same address still controls 870.8 ETH valued at nearly $1.52 million, representing the bulk of the stolen proceeds. Taiko published four attacker addresses, including 0x7506DeA0c38ca0B55364B22424374c5A1ae1B76a, 0x5fbc60a12bc6635e7d587d8dac52e4b1388b4990, 0x3cc936b795a188f0e246cbb2d74c5bd190aecf18 and 0x9108828e30f2de407aadb0af677b4a9228e4acd4, and asked centralized exchanges to suspend TAIKO deposits until an official all-clear is issued. The project also instructed users to "withdraw their funds from all bridges deployed on Taiko immediately," and block proposers halted production of new blocks to prevent further exploitation.

The $TAIKO token declined 10% from $0.1279 to $0.07499 as of press time. DeFi TVL on the network rose about 3.64% to approximately $3.84 million, while bridged TVL held near $12.85 million and weekly transaction counts stood at 324,630, a 3.37% week-over-week decrease. The incident adds to a DefiLlama-tracked tally of more than 20 crypto hacks recorded in June alone, reinforcing bridges' longstanding status among the sector's costliest attack surfaces. Recovery of the stolen assets may depend on how quickly exchanges freeze the flagged wallets now under investigators' scrutiny.