Structural failure
Private Key Compromise
Loss of control of one or more signing keys, whether by phishing, insider action or operational error.
Records exhibiting this pattern
Gravity Bridge Halted After Reported $5.4M Exploit
Gravity Bridge, a Cosmos-Ethereum bridge, was reported exploited on 2026-05-31 for about $5.4 million; public reporting and analyst commentary pointed to a possible signing-key or contract-key compromise, after which the bridge was halted.
$5.4M affectedStakeDAO vsdCRV Key Compromise on Arbitrum
A suspected StakeDAO deployer-key compromise let an attacker redirect vsdCRV bridge settings, mint more than 5.4 trillion tokens on Arbitrum, and extract roughly $91,000 before liquidity constraints halted further selling.
$91000 affectedStake.com Hot-Wallet Hack — September 2023
The Australian-licensed crypto-betting platform lost ~$41M to a hot-wallet compromise attributed by the FBI to North Korea's Lazarus Group. Customer balances were unaffected.
$41.0M affectedMultichain Bridge Disappearance — July 2023
The cross-chain bridge stopped processing transactions and approximately $130M was drained from bridge contracts after its founder and CEO Zhaojun He was reportedly detained by Chinese authorities.
$130.0M affectedAtomic Wallet Hack — June 2023
Approximately 5,500 users of the Estonian non-custodial Atomic Wallet lost a combined ~$100M in June 2023, in an attack attributed by Elliptic and US law enforcement to North Korea's Lazarus Group.
$100.0M affectedRonin Bridge Hack — March 2022
A North Korean state actor compromised 5 of 9 validator nodes on the Ronin sidechain, draining $625 million in ETH and USDC.
$625.0M affectedPoly Network Whitehat Exploit — August 2021
A cross-chain bridge exploit drained $611 million across Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Polygon — the largest crypto theft to that date — and was returned in full by an anonymous attacker who styled themselves "Mr. White Hat".
$611.0M affectedKuCoin Hot-Wallet Hack — September 2020
Attackers drained $281M from KuCoin hot wallets across BTC, ETH, ERC-20 and stablecoin balances. Project teams froze and blacklisted stolen tokens; approximately 84% of value was eventually recovered.
$281.0M affectedBitGrail NANO Hack — February 2018
The Italian exchange disclosed approximately $170M in losses of NANO tokens. Founder Francesco Firano was later found liable by Italian courts and BitGrail entered bankruptcy proceedings.
$170.0M affectedCoincheck NEM Hack — January 2018
The Tokyo exchange lost $530M in NEM tokens from a hot wallet — the largest crypto theft on record at the time. Customers were reimbursed in JPY at recovery prices.
$530.0M affectedBitfinex Hack — August 2016
Attackers extracted 119,756 BTC from Bitfinex segregated hot wallets, worth $72M at the time. In February 2022 the US government seized $4.7B of the proceeds and arrested the two-person laundering operation.
$72.0M affectedMt. Gox Collapse — February 2014
The exchange handling 70 percent of global Bitcoin trading suspended withdrawals, filed for bankruptcy, and disclosed the loss of 850,000 BTC — a recovery that is still being distributed to creditors a decade later.
$450.0M affected