No mercy or no restraint. Hackers are ready at hand to throw their arrow at the next target. This time, the arrow fell on the SagaEVM chain (Ethereum Virtual Machine), a blockchain execution environment on the Saga network.
Exploiters bridge funds in SagaEVM blockchain hack
Hackers have stolen nearly $7 million in USDC stablecoins by exploiting a vulnerability in a smart contract. From the $7 million in assets, the bad actors swapped and bridged over $6 million worth of crypto assets to the Ethereum blockchain. Simply put, attackers exchanged the stolen funds from SagaEVM to other tokens and moved them to the Ethereum mainnet.
According to on-chain investigator Specter, the bad actors exploited vulnerabilities after gaining access to a private key or abusing smart contracts. “It appears this could be the result of a private key compromise.”
One reason hackers moved the funds to Ethereum is due to its deeper liquidity and DeFi tools, which help hackers easily bridge funds, mix, swap, and hide transaction trails. However, it is important to keep in mind that Ethereum’s DeFi tools and deeper liquidity features are not meant to help hackers.
Following the hack, Saga has suspended activities on its EVM blockchain. “SagaEVM remains paused while we finalize the results of our investigation into the Jan 21 exploit”, read an official post by Saga.
That said, the Saga team is working with partners to solve the issue and blacklist the address that received the stolen funds.
A major incident in 2026 after MakinaFi, Truebit exploits
SagaEVM blockchain hack becomes the latest addition to the saga of crypto hacks. A few days ago, hackers moved nearly $4.13 million in Ethereum from Makina Finance (MakinaFi) to two wallet addresses.
In another crypto hack, Truebit Protocol suffered a $26.5 million loss in Ethereum, drawing significant attention in the DeFi niche. Earlier this month, several EVM chains saw over $107,000 in funds being drained through theft. As the SagaEVM chain hack hit the ground, the current statistics of fund loss on the EVM chain could have increased in number.
As crypto sees more inflow of money in the context of smoother regulations and wider crypto adoptions, hackers are misusing the momentum to steal millions.
According to Danor Cohen, CTO of Kerbus blockchain security firm, the crypto industry has deeply focused on monitoring and auditing; however, this progress has not proportionally decreased the funds that users lose.
