An estimated $75 million has been stolen from the Tectonic lending protocol on the Cronos blockchain, an incident so severe it triggered an emergency network halt. The exploit utilized a classic "pump-and-borrow" strategy: the attacker reportedly inflated the TONIC token's value by 100x in just 20 minutes, then used this manipulated asset as collateral to borrow a significant sum of other cryptocurrencies.

Cronos intervened by freezing the blockchain, which effectively contained the majority of the funds. While an estimated $69 million remains on the Cronos network, approximately $6 million was successfully bridged to the Ethereum blockchain. The $75 million figure is an initial estimate and awaits independent verification from Tectonic or Cronos. Prior to the attack, Tectonic held $122 million in Total Value Locked and $83 million in active loans. Crypto.com has confirmed its app and exchange were not compromised and its security team is involved in the ongoing investigation.