Verus-Ethereum Bridge Hack Drains tBTC, Ether and USD Coin

Verus states its Ethereum bridge was exploited and the network halted as many block-producing nodes went offline, while the team investigates losses involving ETH, USDC and tBTC.

ETH

USDC

TBTC

66d ago

Fact Check

The claim is strongly corroborated by multiple independent sources. Blockaid's own official X post (@blockaid_/status/2056176541785034803) directly confirms the ~$11.58M figure from the Verus-Ethereum Bridge exploit. The PeckShield-attributed breakdown (103.6 tBTC, 1,625 ETH, 147,000 USDC consolidated into ~5,402.4 ETH) is reported by Odaily (newsflash/482082) and is internally consistent with the total dollar value. CryptoBriefing independently corroborates the ~$11.4M figure from Etherscan data. The minor discrepancy between $11.4M and $11.58M is consistent with different reporting timestamps during an ongoing exploit and does not undermine the claim. All key elements - the bridge involved, the asset types (tBTC, ETH, USDC), the consolidation amount (~5,402.4 ETH), and the attributing security firms (Blockaid and PeckShield) - are confirmed across sources.

Summary

Verus confirmed an exploit on its Verus-Ethereum bridge involving ETH, USDC and tBTC and said the Verus network was halted with many block-producing nodes offline while the team investigates the full scope. Earlier reporting put the loss at about $11.58 million, with PeckShieldAlert tracing 103.6 tBTC, 1,625 ETH and 147,000 USDC and reporting the attacker swapped the assets into about 5,402.4 ETH. Blockaid and SlowMist founder Cos said the exploit appears to have involved a forged Merkle proof that passed verification despite valid notarized state-root signatures from 8 of 15 notaries. The article also notes that cross-chain bridge hacks have caused more than $300 million in losses in 2026.

Terms & Concepts

Merkle proof: A cryptographic proof used to verify that specific data belongs to a larger data set represented by a Merkle tree, without revealing the entire data set.
Cross-chain bridge: Infrastructure that lets users move tokens or data between separate blockchains, typically by locking assets on one network and issuing a corresponding asset on another.
tBTC: A tokenized form of Bitcoin on another blockchain, designed to let users access Bitcoin-linked value in decentralized applications.