Initia halts its blockchain and rollups after researchers report unauthorized minting and about $2.6 million cashed out, a loss the project has not confirmed

Initia has stopped its blockchain. The project halted its layer-1 network and its rollups on Friday, October 23, at 3:41 p.m. UTC, following what it called a security incident, according to its post on X, as reported by Cointelegraph and crypto.news. It said it is working with security researchers, validators and exchanges to establish the scope of the impact and will share verified information through its official channels.

The loss figures come from outside researchers, not from Initia. Spreek, a security researcher, said an attacker minted tokens without authorization and converted about $2.6 million into other assets, with more still moving. D2 Finance said about 2 million AUSD was minted without enough backing, that cross-chain withdrawals then moved roughly 1.4 million AUSD, 105 ETH and 1.08 million USDC to Ethereum, and that the assets were gathered in a wallet holding about 1,135.5 ETH, worth about $2.73 million. D2 Finance traced the problem to a flaw in a Move function, Cointelegraph reported. Cointelegraph said Initia had not confirmed the losses or the cause.

Agora disputed the AUSD minting account, saying the incident involved a third-party product that uses AUSD and that it has no smart contracts on Initia, crypto.news reported. INIT briefly fell to about $0.115 and traded near $0.15, up about 14% over 24 hours, per CoinGecko data cited by Cointelegraph. What to watch: Initia's verified account of the reported loss, the cause and a restart timetable, none of which it has given.