XRP Coreum bridge hack drains 99.7% of reserves in under two hours
A cross-chain bridge that once held over 200,000 XRP was left with pocket change in less than two hours, and nobody had to steal a single private key to make it happen. The XRP Coreum bridge hack drained 99.7% of the reserve backing the Coreum-to-XRP Ledger connector on August 9, turning what should have been routine deposit verification into an open door for an attacker who simply understood the software better than the people running it.
Key takeaways
- An attacker drained 99.7% of the XRP reserve backing the Coreum cross-blockchain bridge on August 9, leaving it holding roughly 493 XRP.
- 199,916 XRP, worth more than $200,000, was withdrawn across 94 transactions in a window of about 97 minutes.
- The exploit did not involve stolen private keys; it exploited buggy relayer software that trusted a transaction memo instead of verifying the actual payment destination.
- TX, the brand behind Coreum and Sologenic, confirmed the incident, admitted bridged XRP on its chain is not currently fully backed, and said a complaint has been filed with the FBI.
- XRP fell below $1 for the first time since November 2024 as the news spread, though the coin’s broader slide this year predates the exploit.
The Exploit That Emptied Coreum’s Bridge
The Coreum bridge lost virtually its entire XRP reserve in a single, tightly compressed attack window. Coreum’s The bridge liquidity account disbursed 199,916 XRP, valued at approximately $200,000, through 94 separate transactions, and each payout carried a majority of valid signatures from the bridge’s own relayer network. Within hours, the project discovered it held just 493 XRP, down from a balance that had sat around 200,410 XRP before the attack began.
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