Initia Pauses Its Network After Attacker Mints and Bridges Out About $2.7 Million

Initia, a blockchain designed to link a network of interconnected chains, stopped its layer-1 network and rollups on Friday after a security incident, The Block reported.

What happened

Co-founder Ezaan Mangalji, known as Zon, said early findings pointed to a previously unknown bug in the network's MoveVM implementation on the Cosmos SDK. The flaw allowed unauthorized minting of tokens, he said, but did not affect the native INIT token. According to his account, the attacker minted and bridged out roughly $2.7 million in AUSD, ETH and USDC before the chain was paused.

Blockchain researcher Spreek had earlier estimated that about $2.6 million had been cashed out, with more funds still moving. Initia said it was working with security teams, validators and exchanges to measure the full scope of the incident and had not confirmed a final loss figure, The Block reported.

Market reaction

INIT fell about 14% right after the exploit was first reported, then reversed and was trading about 14% higher on the day, according to The Block.

Why it matters

Halting a chain can limit damage, but it also shows how much control validators and core teams can exercise during an emergency, a trade-off users weigh when choosing networks. Bugs in virtual machines and bridges remain one of the biggest risks in crypto, since a single flaw can let an attacker create assets out of thin air and move them to other chains before anyone reacts.

The investigation is ongoing, and figures may change as Initia releases more details.