MANTRA Chain back online after 30-hour halt following Cosmos‑EVM patch MANTRA Chain has resumed block production after a coordinated emergency upgrade fixed a vulnerability in its Cosmos‑EVM module that left the mainnet offline for roughly 30 hours. The project deployed release v8.4.0 and said blocks began producing again at about 05:30 UTC on Aug. 22, restoring public RPC and EVM endpoints after a staged validator restart. What happened - The incident began late on Aug. 20 when MANTRA detected an attacker exploiting a vulnerability in an upstream dependency used by the chain. The team halted the mainnet to stop transactions while security teams investigated. - The network stayed frozen from the last processed block (about 23:13 UTC on Aug. 20, block 17,449,398) until the patched release was rolled out. MANTRA says no user balances changed, there was no chain rollback, and users were not required to take any action. - Investigation traced the issue to the Cosmos‑EVM module and flagged activity in two MANTRA‑managed wallets. MANTRA has not disclosed exactly what occurred in those addresses, how much value was involved, or the precise upstream component exploited. Patch, testing and restart - Developers captured a full snapshot of the halted chain state and built v8.4.0 to repair the EVM vulnerability and add extra protections. The update was tested on MANTRA’s DuKong testnet and in an internal mainnet replica before being reheated through repeated upgrade rehearsals. - The restart was coordinated: MANTRA‑operated validators upgraded first, then partner validators, ordinary nodes, RPC services and archive nodes. The team said a partial restart could have caused operational issues, so the full validator set was brought back online together. - The upgrade required no module changes, state migrations or stored-data alterations. DuKong remained offline after mainnet returned while engineers monitor stability and continue testnet restoration. User and ecosystem impact - While the chain was halted, transfers, staking, bridges, and MANTRA‑managed IBC relays were frozen; some exchanges paused deposits and withdrawals tied to the network. MANTRA maintains there was no evidence of user, exchange, or partner funds being directly affected. - Public explorers, indexers and other downstream services may lag while processing the backlog of data created after the restart. Market reaction - The MANTRA token slid roughly 18.5% during the outage, dropping from about $0.005060 to a record low near $0.004126 (CoinGecko) at about 23:10 UTC on Aug. 20, minutes before the network’s last reported block. Trading volume spiked nearly 600% to roughly $24 million during the initial market reaction. MANTRA has not confirmed a causal link between the incident and price movement. Broader context: Cosmos‑EVM and prior advisories - MANTRA added EVM support alongside CosmWasm in September 2025 to let developers deploy Ethereum‑compatible smart contracts on its RWA‑focused Layer 1. - The incident draws attention to an earlier Cosmos Labs advisory (ASA‑2026‑002, March 2026) on an ICS20 precompile bug that could allow duplicate token use during nested EVM execution — a flaw that contributed to an estimated $7 million loss on Saga EVM in January. Cosmos Labs identified chains with affected code and released a permanent fix in Cosmos EVM v0.6.0. - MANTRA was among teams that assisted in addressing that prior issue, but neither MANTRA nor Cosmos Labs has said the Aug. 20 exploit was the same ICS20 flaw. MANTRA says it will publish a full technical post‑mortem; until then, attribution would be premature. Corporate and product context - MANTRA’s network is focused on tokenized real‑world assets and works with institutional projects. In June, Inveniam Capital Partners announced plans to acquire MANTRA after making a $20 million strategic investment in Aug. 2025. The companies are also connected through NVNM Chain, a Layer 2 for private‑market asset data built on MANTRA. What’s next MANTRA says a complete post‑incident analysis covering the Cosmos‑EVM vulnerability and its response will be released in the coming days. Engineers continue to monitor mainnet stability and to restore the public DuKong testnet. We’ll update this post with MANTRA’s technical report and any further disclosures about the two managed wallets or the specific upstream component responsible for the exploit. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news