Truebit's token value collapsed after a $26 million hack, with investigations ongoing into the breach's cause and damage.
Truebit, an Ethereum verification protocol, suffered a significant security breach on January 8, leading to the theft of 8,535 ETH, valued at approximately $26.4 million. The incident was highlighted by analysts from Lookonchain.
Truebit has been exploited, with 8,535 ETH ($26.44M) stolen. 🚨
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) January 8, 2026
The Truebit project team confirmed the hack, indicating that only one smart contract was compromised. Details regarding the cause of the breach and the full extent of the damage are still under investigation.
“We are in contact with law enforcement and are taking all available measures to resolve the situation,” Truebit stated.
Independent researcher Weilin (William) Li suggested that the attackers exploited a flaw in a token minting function, which had an inaccurately set price in an outdated contract from five years ago.
It appears the root cause was a mispriced minting function that allowed the attackers to acquire TRU tokens at a very low price. The first attacker profited $26 million.
— Weilin (William) Li (@hklst4r) January 8, 2026
The hackers took advantage of this vulnerability to purchase TRU coins at a fraction of their actual value.
Li speculated that two separate groups participated in the hack, with one group profiting approximately $26 million and another gaining around $250,000.
In response to the breach, the TRU token's value plummeted nearly 100% within 24 hours, trading at about $0.00007212 at the time of this report, according to CoinGecko.
This incident follows a series of security breaches in the crypto space, including an $8.5 million hack of the Trust Wallet browser extension that impacted 2,520 addresses and a $3.9 million theft from the DeFi protocol Unleash Protocol. In total, hacks in 2025 have led to losses of $3.4 billion, with a notable portion attributed to North Korean hackers.
