Shibarium Prepares to Restart Ethereum Bridge
Shibarium developers announced plans to restart the platform’s Ethereum bridge. This follows a $4 million exploit that forced an emergency shutdown earlier this month. The team is also working on a reimbursement plan for affected users.
In a post-mortem report, developers confirmed that all validator keys were rotated. Over 100 ecosystem contracts were migrated to secure wallets. They also recovered 4.6 million BONE tokens from the attacker’s contract.
Details of the September 12 Exploit
The attack occurred on September 12. A hacker submitted fake data to Shibarium’s Ethereum-linked contracts. This triggered an automatic system shutdown as a safety measure.
The attacker staked millions of dollars in BONE tokens to meet validator thresholds. This gave them partial control over the network.
About $4.1 million in Ethereum (ETH), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and 15 other tokens were drained from the bridge. This was confirmed in a community update on September 17.
Response and Market Impact
- Lead developer Kaal Dhairya said authorities were contacted.
- They offered the attacker a 50 ETH bonus to return the stolen funds.
- No agreement was reached, and the funds were moved again.
- The team is designing a reimbursement framework for affected users.
Since the attack, SHIB has dropped about 13%, trading at $0.00001269. BONE has fallen over 43%, trading at $0.1391, according to CoinMarketCap.
Developers stressed the protocol remains operational. Strengthening network security is their top priority as the bridge relaunch approaches.
