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Initia

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LayerZero

Initia is back online per an early Monday announcement confirming that its layer-1 blockchain and rollups are processing transactions once again, writing that “the Initia L1 and rollups are now online and operational.”&nbsp;
The network restart ends an over-nine-day halt initiated by the project on October 23 after attackers exploited a flaw in its MoveVM, allowing them to withdraw about $2.7 million from the project.&nbsp;
<h3 id="span-style-font-weight-400-initia-to-be-restored-in-phases-span">Initia to be restored in phases&nbsp;</h3>
Initia did not turn on all its features at once, with cross-chain bridge and trading-platform transfers set to come back at some point on Monday, November 2. Withdrawals are also expected to be completed according to preset structures. Per reports, LayerZero OFT assets, WETH, and AUSD0 have a 24-hour processing window, while Noble USDC withdrawals are subject to hourly limits.&nbsp;
Notably, Initia has pointed out that it has restored full backing for AUSD0, USDC.n and WETH.
<a href="https://x.com/initia/status/2117120717468958926" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">The restart</a> came after the project <a href="https://x.com/initia/status/2116087208688099687" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">ran a chain upgrade</a> that would apply an independently audited MoveVM patch. The patch also added extra security measures and cut off forged balances still tied to the attacker from the network.&nbsp;
Initia did not roll back the network.
<h3 id="span-style-font-weight-400-a-day-0-movevm-flaw-let-the-attacker-mint-tokens-span">A Day 0 MoveVM flaw let the attacker mint tokens</h3>
Initia halted its layer-1 chain and every connected rollup at 15:41:30 UTC on October 23, following an alert first raised by onchain analyst Spreek.
Co-founder Ezaan Mangalji blamed the breach on a previously unknown “Day 0 bug related to Initia’s MoveVM on CosmosSDK” that allowed the attackers to create additional, unbacked tokens on the L1. The losses came from these unbacked token mints, with the native INIT token’s supply remaining unchanged throughout the episode.&nbsp;
The attacker minted 2 million unbacked AUSD tokens, then used cross-chain transfers to push roughly 1.4 million AUSD, 105 Ether and 1.08 million USDC to Ethereum.<a href="https://www.cryptopolitan.com/initia-attacker-moves-1135-eth-chain-halts/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Cryptopolitan reported</a> that the funds stolen in the hack came up to around $2.73 million.&nbsp;
<h3 id="span-style-font-weight-400-initia-foundation-covered-the-losses-span">Initia Foundation covered the losses</h3>
The Initia Foundation approved funding to make up the difference on the funds drained from the bridge at a 1:1 ratio of the unbacked assets moved from the chain.
The issuer of the AUSD stablecoin, Agora, helped contain the fallout, freezing addresses linked to the hacker.
South Korean exchange <a href="https://www.cryptopolitan.com/upbit-delists-bonk-as-bithumb-clears-the-same-coin/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Upbit</a> suspended INIT deposits and withdrawals after the incident, keeping trading open.&nbsp;
INIT dropped about 14% when the news broke, then recovered. By October 29, the token was reportedly up 53.21% over 24 hours at $0.272354, after spiking as high as $0.423 and pulling back.&nbsp;
INIT was<a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/initia/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">trading around $0.1585</a>, down more than 11% over the last 24 hours as of this report.
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Initia is back after more than nine days offline over a $2.7M exploit

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