Taiko Reopens Bridge After June $1.7 Million Exploit,…
Taiko reopened its cross-chain bridge after moving through a four-stage recovery from a June 21 attack that drained roughly $1.7 million, letting users shift funds between its Ethereum layer-2 network and the Ethereum mainnet again and confirming that every bridged asset now holds full one-to-one backing.
The reopening followed a week in which Taiko urged users to pull funds from every bridge on the network and paused its systems after confirming that its chain-state verification mechanism had been compromised. The team sealed the attack path, brought in independent security experts to review its fixes, and sequenced the restart so that user funds stayed protected at each stage.
Taiko redeployed its fixes and verified that the chain’s finalized state carried no forged checkpoints or reachable attacker claims through a check routed to its Security Council, then topped up the bridge so that every layer-2 asset holds backing anyone can confirm on-chain. Restarting the network came next, with transfers, swaps, and trading on the layer-2 back online before the team turned to the bridge itself.
Taiko Reopens Under Withdrawal Caps
Taiko told users on X that they can move funds to and from the network again and framed its response as complete, with the chain fully restored and every user made whole. The team lifted the bridge pause through a Security Council proposal once the chain finalized cleanly and held stable, reopening with conservative withdrawal quotas as an extra safeguard that it said should not limit anyone’s ability to move assets under normal use.
The team stated that no user will lose funds and committed to a full post-mortem. Taiko also flagged impersonation risks, stressing that it never sends direct messages first and operates no claim site, and told users to rely only on its official account.
TAIKO, the network’s native token, has climbed by double digits since the announcement. CoinMarketCap data shows the asset up 10.11% on the day, with its market capitalization pushing toward the $30 million mark. The token’s holder base tracked that move, adding 340 new addresses over the past day to reach an all-time high of 4,600 holders at the time of reporting. Whether the accumulation holds remains unclear, though the buying momentum has stayed intact through the near term.
Taiko Attack Adds to 2026 Bridge Losses
The reopening lands in a year that has hit cross-chain infrastructure harder than most corners of the market, with the bulk of exploits tracing to flawed contract code, thin verification, or leaked keys and bridge-related losses across 2026 already running past $328 million.
The forged-proof pattern behind the Taiko drain has surfaced repeatedly through the year. The Verus-Ethereum bridge lost about $11.58 million in May after an attacker slipped forged transfer requests past its validation, though the exploiter later returned 4,052 ETH, roughly $8.5 million or 75% of the haul, once Verus offered a 1,350 ETH bounty and agreed to drop legal action. Hyperbridge lost around $237,000 in April when an attacker pushed through a forged cross-chain message that let them mint one billion bridged Polkadot tokens, with thin liquidity capping how much they could extract.