Adding to a series of increasing hacks, the Truebit Protocol is reportedly the latest victim, as exploiters stole nearly $26.5 million worth of Ethereum from the blockchain platform. The Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum is on the receiving end of one of the largest attacks since the beginning of 2026.
Stolen assets transferred to wallets
As reported by on-chain investigator PeckShieldAlert, hackers stole nearly 8,500 Ethereum, which is equal to $26.5 million. The stolen funds were then moved to two wallet addresses.
Among the two wallets, one received 4,267 ETH, and the other received 4,001 ETH, wrote an analyst by the name Crypto Patel.
Hackers who have exploited the blockchain are not new to their job. A few days ago, the same hackers attacked Sparkle, an AI-powered entertainment platform, stealing five Ethereum, which they transferred to Tornado Cash, a decentralized crypto mixer on Ethereum.
An exploit that attacked the smart contract
Hackers targeted a vulnerability in the code on the Truebit Protocol, which they exploited to steal $26 million. The code (bytecode) was live on Ethereum for over five years, and hackers found a logical flaw inside it, said security audit provider Pashov, in an X post.
Analyst Crypto Patel defines the exploit, saying a math bug in the smart contract lured hackers, through which they created TRU tokens, the native token of Truebit Protocol.
Attackers fed large inputs or token amounts into the smart contract, and the smart contract miscalculated the price of TRU tokens, resulting in the price of the coin dropping to almost zero. “This is the first major DeFi hack of 2026”, wrote Crypto Patel.
However, compared to crypto exchange and DeFi protocol hacks in 2025, the amount of funds drained from Truebit Protocol is comparatively less. Last year, we saw the Bybit exchange, Upbit exchange, Balancer DeFi protocol, and Trust Wallet browser extension hacks, which had a significant amount of stolen funds.
Worth noting, as the analyst noted, minor coding mistakes can lead to vulnerability that hackers can easily exploit to steal millions.
