Initia has halted its blockchain and connected roll-up networks after confirming a security incident that allegedly allowed an attacker to mint an estimated $2.7m (£2.1m) worth of tokens.
The modular blockchain platform stopped processing activity on Friday, with its team investigating the breach alongside security teams, validators and cryptocurrency exchanges.
“As of Oct 23, 2026, 3:41:30 PM UTC, the Initia L1 and Rollups have been halted due to a security incident,” the official Initia X account said at 12 p.m. Eastern time on Friday. “Our team is actively investigating the situation and working to establish the full scope of any impact with security teams, validators, and exchanges.”
Initia is designed to allow different cryptocurrency networks to operate together. Its layer-one blockchain was built using the Cosmos SDK and CometBFT consensus, and acts as a central coordinator for the networks linked to it. A vulnerability affecting the main chain can therefore have implications beyond one individual application.
MoveVM vulnerability under investigation
Initia co-founder Ezaan Mangalji later provided further information about the suspected cause of the incident.
“To the best of our knowledge so far, this is a Day 0 bug related to Initia’s MoveVM on CosmosSDK that allowed the exploiter to mint additional tokens on the Initia L1 but does not apply to native INIT tokens,” Mangalji wrote on X.
At 7:45 p.m., about seven hours after the incident was first reported, the Initia chain remained halted at block height 23365925.
Agora, the company behind the AUSD stablecoin, said its own token contract had not been affected.
“We’re aware of today’s security incident on Initia. Agora has no smart contracts deployed on Initia. Our security team has been monitoring the situation and will freeze funds related to hacker addresses that hold AUSD on chains where AUSD/Agora smart contracts are deployed,” Agora wrote on X.
The company also said it would take action against funds connected to hacker addresses holding AUSD on chains where AUSD and Agora smart contracts are deployed.
The incident led South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit to suspend INIT deposits and withdrawals.
INIT fell after the initial reports, but later recovered and was 12.5% higher over the previous 24 hours. The asset has also risen 65.8% in the past 30 days, recording that gain since 23 September.
According to the latest information from scan.initia.xyz, the layer-one blockchain remains offline. Initia’s official X account has not confirmed the full financial impact of the incident, and developers have not announced when normal operations will resume.
