Initia Halts Network After Mint Exploit, ~$2.6M Cashed Out

Initia's layer-1 blockchain and all of its rollups have been halted after a security incident: on October 23 an attacker reportedly exploited a flaw that allowed tokens to be minted without limit. Analyst Spreek estimated the attacker had already cashed out about $2.6 million, with more funds still moving. The Block published its first report at 1:03 PM ET.

Details

According to The Block, roughly 1,135 ETH (over $2.7 million) was moved in a single transaction. The Defiant, citing Ethereum records, confirms stablecoin swaps followed by a transfer of 1,135.5 ETH. Crypto Briefing reports that a wallet linked to the attacker still held about $4.5 million in assets on the Initia chain.

Initia said it is investigating the scope of the incident with security firms, validators and exchanges. The project has not officially confirmed the total loss and has not yet published a detailed post-mortem, so the figures above are estimates from analysts and media, not a statement from the team.

The INIT token, per The Block, first fell about 14% on news of the exploit and then rose about 14% by the end of the day.

What it means for the market

An unlimited-mint exploit highlights a core risk for young networks: a flaw in token issuance logic lets an attacker create assets and move them out through bridges and swaps almost immediately. The losses are small next to the year's largest hacks, but halting the whole chain and its rollups affects users and apps built on Initia.

A post-mortem and any restart plan are still to come. The broader market has not been affected; live prices are in the daily brief, and more on this year's exploits is in our Q3 hacks review.

Full timeline — in our explainer.