Cronos Blockchain Pauses After Tectonic Lending Exploit, $119.5M at Risk

Cronos Network has paused operations after an exploit hit Tectonic, its lending protocol, with on-chain analysis estimating that $119.5 million was drained from lending pools.

Tectonic has not confirmed the final loss, but its team is investigating as users are warned not to interact with the protocol.

Following the attack, Tectonic responded quickly by posting on X, saying it was aware of the incident and urged users to stop using the protocol until the platform is confirmed to be safe.

“As a precaution, please do not interact with the protocol until we confirm it is safe to do so.”

The size of the loss remains the biggest unanswered question. Tectonic has not published a confirmed figure. However, an on-chain analysis using a Cronos archive node estimates that $119.5 million was drained in 65 minutes.

The analysis also shows only $1.73 million remained across the affected markets. It recorded 752 liquidations involving roughly $8.71 million seized from other users, while $32.6 million in bad debt was left behind.

The exploit centered on the price of Tectonic’s TONIC token. According to the on-chain analysis, the attacker first deposited 3,091 TONIC and borrowed 3,697 TONIC in the same block.

Just 14 seconds later, the TONIC oracle price jumped 6.46 times in a single block. This sharply increased the value of the attacker’s collateral and allowed $125.6 million in borrowing.

The attacker then withdrew assets including $54.32 million in USDC, $44.87 million in USDT, 95.36 WBTC, 1,861 WETH, and 39.61 million CRO, along with several other tokens.

The analysis shows $75.7 million was sent to an external wallet, while another $43.7 million went to a contract address.

Cronos Network even confirmed the exploit and halted the network while its team investigated with help from Crypto.com’s security team.

“We identified an exploit in Tectonic. The Cronos Network has been halted, and we’ll provide updates here.”

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said the company’s app and exchange were not affected and that customer funds remained safe.

For now, the $119.5 million figure remains an on-chain estimate, not a confirmed Tectonic loss.

Rizwan is an experienced Crypto journalist with almost half a decade of experience covering everything related to the growing crypto industry — from price analysis to blockchain disruption. During this period, he’s authored more than 3,000 news articles for Coinpedia News.

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