Liquid Sidechain Halts Operations After $320M Bitcoin Withdrawal
- Approximately 4,000 Bitcoin (valued at $320 million) were withdrawn from Liquid’s federation wallet.
- The withdrawal represented about 95% of the wallet’s total balance of 4,200 BTC.
- Liquid paused operations and disabled bridge nodes to prevent new transactions following the incident.
- Blockstream is in communication with the actors, who claim to be white-hat hackers, regarding a vulnerability fix before returning funds.
- Other assets on the network, including USDT and real-world assets, remain unaffected by this incident.
The situation arose when actors utilizing a bug in Elements software withdrew significant funds from Liquid’s wallet. The sidechain remains paused while federation members address the identified vulnerabilities.
As of now, the withdrawn funds have not been returned, and Liquid continues to work on securing its systems after losing approximately 95% of its Bitcoin balance.(Source)
