Taiko bridge is back, users are whole, and a $1.7M hole is officially someone else's problem 🩹

Ethereum layer-2 network Taiko has reopened its bridge and restored full operations, roughly 11 days after an exploit drained up to $1.7 million in crypto assets. On Thursday, the project confirmed that users can once again move funds to and from the network following the final stage of its four-step recovery plan. Taiko said all affected users have been made whole and that temporary withdrawal limits remain in place as a precaution without affecting normal usage.

The incident occurred on June 21, when an attacker compromised Taiko's chain-state verification mechanism, allowing forged proofs to be accepted and enabling unauthorized withdrawals from its Ethereum vault. Blockchain security firms estimated the loss at up to $1.7 million. Taiko outlined its recovery plan on Sunday, deploying fixes and verifying that the chain's finalized state contained no forged checkpoints or attacker claims that could still be executed.

According to Taiko, the changes were submitted through its security council and reviewed by independent security experts. The project then replenished the bridge to ensure that assets issued on the network were backed 1:1 by assets held on Ethereum. Taiko also introduced conservative withdrawal quotas as an added safeguard, though it did not disclose the size of the quotas and stated they are not expected to prevent standard bridge transactions.

The project has not disclosed how the bridge's 1:1 backing was restored or whether any of the stolen assets were recovered. Taiko said it would publish a full postmortem detailing the incident and its response. Following the bridge reopening, the network's token, TAIKO, briefly surged to about $0.35 before retreating to roughly $0.14, according to CoinGecko data.