This Is What Really Happened In The $26M Truebit Hack
- According to a postmortem report, a math error in the Truebit Protocol purchase contract was responsible for the $26 million theft
- Hackers minted millions in tokens for nearly zero cost by bypassing overflow checks.
- The TRU token price crashed by 100% following the $26 million drain.
The cryptocurrency space was hit hard on January 12, when the Truebit Protocol suffered a massive exploit that drained $26 million.
This event caused the native TRU token to lose all its value almost instantly. Security experts from SlowMist analysed the situation and found that a small mistake in the code led to this financial disaster.
How a Simple Code Error Led to the Truebit hack
Every smart contract relies on precise math to work properly.
In the case of Truebit, the contract used to buy tokens contained a small mistake. The developers wrote the contract using an older version of the Solidity programming language.
Specifically, they used version 0.6.10, and this version does not automatically check for a problem called “integer overflow.”
How the attacker stole the funds | source: Slowmist
The attacker figured out a way to craft a specific minting amount. When the contract tried to add numbers together to calculate the price, the total became too large for the system to handle.
Instead of stopping the transaction, the number wrapped around back to zero. This “silent overflow” meant that the price of millions of tokens suddenly became zero. The hacker exploited this loophole to mint 8,535 ETH worth of tokens at almost no cost.
The Immediate Result of the Truebit Protocol Hack on the Market
Once the tokens were minted for free, the attacker quickly began draining the protocol’s reserves.
The TRU token price fell by 99% within minutes of the discovery, and currently, the token shows a 100% loss on major tracking sites like CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. Trading volume has vanished as investors lost all faith in the project.
The Truebit team acknowledged the incident through their official channels.
They identified the affected contract and told users to stop interacting with it. They are now working with law enforcement to trace the stolen funds. However, many community members feel that a full recovery is unlikely.
Unexpected Gains for Other Platforms
While Truebit suffered, other parts of the ecosystem saw even worse activity. Uniswap recorded a massive jump in its daily trading fee revenue on January 8.
The platform captured over $1.4 million in fees in a single day, and this was the highest amount the platform had ever seen.
Analysts discovered that nearly $1.3 million of those fees came from trades related to the TRU token. The high volume was a direct result of the arbitrage and selling happening during the hack.
An analyst named Marcov eventually removed these values from the live Dune dashboard. Since the token value hit zero, those fees will not be used to burn UNI as originally expected.
The Move Toward Social Engineering and Phishing
While protocol hacks still happen, many criminals now seem to be changing their approach. They are moving away from complex code exploits to target human behaviour.
Crypto phishing scams cost investors $722 million across 248 incidents last year.
Fortunately, people are becoming more aware of these dangers. The total amount lost to phishing so far in 2025 was 38% lower than the $1 billion lost in 2024.
This shows that education and better wallet security are starting to work. Even so, the Truebit Protocol hack proves that technical bugs are still a massive danger.
The post This Is What Really Happened In The $26M Truebit Hack appeared first on Live Bitcoin News.
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