1 week ago
12
- Hyperbridge exploit minted 1 billion DOT on Ethereum.
- Attacker minted tokens worth $1.1B at prior market rates, realized only 108.2 ETH.
- Bridged DOT collapsed from $1.22 to near zero within one hour of the dump.
- Native DOT on Polkadot relay chain unaffected – down ~4% in sympathy.
What Happened
The Hyperbridge cross-chain gateway, a bridge connecting Polkadot to Ethereum, was exploited on April 13, 2026. The attacker identified a vulnerability that allowed them to seize admin privileges over the DOT token contract on Ethereum, transfer control to a malicious address, and forge gateway messages to authorize minting. One billion DOT were created and immediately dumped into available liquidity pools.
The timing is the most damaging contextual detail. In March 2026, six weeks before this exploit, the Polkadot community implemented a hard supply cap of 2.1 billion DOT through governance. The decision was designed to give DOT, Read Entire Article
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