News
Holograph Hack Leads to $7 Million Loss, HLG Token Drops 80%
Holograph, a leading omnichain tokenization platform, suffered a significant smart contract exploit, resulting in the loss of 1 billion HLG tokens worth approximately $7 million.
Following the incident, the project’s native HLG token fell by around 80% over the past 24 hours to a low of $0.0029, before recovering slightly to $0.0068 at the time of this writing . The tokens were delivered to the community in May.
Holograph facilitates token transfers across blockchain by maintaining the original contract address. This innovation has enabled asset issuers to index cross-chain data effectively. The company has secured funding from major investors, including Animoca brands and Capital Mechanism.
The hacking
The platform confirmed on X that its contract with the holographic operator had been compromised by a malicious actor, who subsequently minted 1 billion HLG tokens.
While the initial exploit has been patched, the Holograph team is actively working with exchanges to block compromised accounts. It added:
“The team has launched an investigation and is contacting law enforcement.”
Chain data indicates that the tokens were worth approximately $7 million at the time of the theft.
Cyvers blockchain security platform reported that some of the stolen tokens were exchanged for USDT stablecoin, which the attacker used to acquire 300 of them ET. Subsequently, the hacker distributed the funds to several addresses, including those linked to privacy protocols such as Tornado Cash and Railgun.
Despite these movements, on-chain data shows that the exploiter’s address is still worth around 47.59 ETH, worth around $167,000 at the time of writing.
Matt Casto, DeFi researcher at CMT Digital, She said the attacker was likely “a rogue developer who funded the address 26 days ago,” adding that “the address was the one who received the minted supply.”
This incident follows recent updates to the project’s ecosystem. The platform predicted this update to LayerZero V2 to improve cross-chain security and support new chains such as Sei, Blast, SolanaTon, zkSync and ZetaChain.