Cronos, the blockchain Crypto.com launched in 2021, stopped producing blocks on Sunday after an attacker exploited Tectonic, the network’s largest lending protocol. On-chain researcher Weilin Li estimates roughly $75 million in assets were affected. Neither Cronos nor Tectonic has confirmed the amount or detailed the cause.

Tectonic accepted its low liquidity and volume governance token, TONIC, as collateral at a 20% collateral factor, meaning $100 of value recognized by the protocol could support about $20 of borrowing. Li says the attacker pushed TONIC’s price up about 100-fold in roughly 20 minutes, deposited the inflated tokens and borrowed other assets against them. Only about $6 million reached Ethereum before validators halted the chain.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

Tectonic held about $121.7 million in total value locked on Aug. 26, close to half of all capital deposited across Cronos DeFi. That figure had fallen to about $3 million by Monday. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said the company’s app and exchange were not compromised and that its security team is assisting the investigation.

The TONIC attack follows a familiar playbook. Moonwell, a lending protocol on Base, lost an estimated $8.7 million last week after an attacker manipulated the collateral price of the thinly traded MAMO token. A roughly 3% move in a thin Pendle market triggered about $36 million of liquidations on Morpho the same week. Cronos has drawn scrutiny for centralization before: Crypto.com forced through a vote in March 2025 to re-mint 70 billion CRO tokens burned in 2021, over the objections of nearly every other large holder.

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