MANTRA Chain Revealed Details of $3.6M Attack
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Infrastructure5.51h ago

MANTRA Chain Revealed Details of $3.6M Attack

incrypted.com·4 min read
Infrastructure

On August 20, 2026, MANTRA Chain experienced a security breach resulting in the unauthorized movement of 720.9 million MANTRA tokens, valued at approximately $3.6 million. The attacker exploited an unsigned-integer underflow vulnerability within the Cosmos EVM module, which allowed for unauthorized withdrawals from economically inactive balances. This incident forced the network to halt operations for over 30 hours to implement a fix via version v8.4.0. While no user funds were drained from active accounts, the attack significantly increased the circulating supply of the token. The vulnerability stemmed from a lack of balance checks during state reconciliation between the EVM and Cosmos Bank modules. Although a patch existed in the development branch since May, it had not been backported to the production release until after the exploit occurred. MANTRA Chain has since initiated recovery procedures with law enforcement and exchanges to address the stolen assets. This event highlights the critical importance of rigorous security auditing and timely patch management for RWA-focused blockchain infrastructures.

Key points
  • 720.9 million MANTRA tokens were moved due to a Cosmos EVM underflow vulnerability.
  • Network operations were suspended for 30 hours and 13 minutes during incident remediation.
  • The exploit bypassed authorization by targeting inactive balances and burn addresses.
  • MANTRA Chain restored operations using version v8.4.0 without requiring a chain rollback.
Background

MANTRA Chain is a Layer 1 blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK, specifically designed to support the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA). It utilizes an EVM-compatible module to bridge traditional finance requirements with decentralized infrastructure, enabling regulatory-compliant asset management and institutional-grade security.

Relevance
5.5/10
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