A serious security breach recently rocked the cryptocurrency community when Polkadot 's cross-chain bridging system was attacked, leading to the unauthorized issuance of up to 1 billion DOT Token and a sell-off on the Ethereum network, causing the asset's price to plummet to near zero in an extremely short period. This is XEM one of the most shocking events for the Polkadot ecosystem in recent times, especially as the market was anticipating a recovery wave of Layer-0 and cross-chain projects.
According to on-chain data, the incident occurred on April 13th when suspicious wallet addresses suddenly gained control of the bridge contract through a change in governance. After successfully gaining control, the attackers quickly triggered an unauthorized Mint of 1 billion DOT on Ethereum – an enormous amount compared to the circulating supply. In just about an hour, all of these Token were dumped on the market, creating massive selling pressure and causing the price of DOT to plummet from around $1.22 to near zero on the relevant liquidation pools.
Notably, the attack did not directly affect Polkadot 's native blockchain but focused on assets bridged to Ethereum. This highlights the continued vulnerability of cross-chain bridges – Capital XEM the most susceptible link in the DeFi ecosystem. Over the past few years, numerous major hacks have targeted bridges, resulting in billions of dollars in losses for the sector.
