TAO dumps 15% after hack halts chain

The Bittensor blockchain was temporarily halted after an attack on several user wallets, causing a 15% drop in TAO prices after the hack . Investigations are ongoing into the attack, which is suspected to have been caused by a private key leakage. Bittensor has been put into “safe mode” to prevent further transactions until more information is available.

• The attack was detected early Wednesday, with at least one wallet drained of $8 million worth of TAO tokens.
• TAO prices dropped as much as 15% but slightly recovered as core members implemented steps to mitigate further mishaps.
• Co-founder Ala Shaabana confirmed on X that the chain was put on “safe mode,” meaning blocks were being produced, but no transactions were being processed.

Meanwhile, independent security researcher @ZachXBT reported on his Telegram channel that one user lost 32,000 TAO, worth $8 million, due to a suspected private key leakage. Investigations are ongoing as of Wednesday morning. Bittensor connects machine learning models owned by various individuals worldwide and is one of the largest AI-focused crypto projects, with a market capitalization of $1.6 billion.