Initia halts network after security incident, attacker reportedly mints tokens

Initia halted its Layer 1 blockchain and interwoven rollups on October 23, 2026, after an attacker exploited a Day 0 vulnerability in its MoveVM Cosmos SDK implementation. Co-founder Ezaan Mangalji stated the attacker minted and bridged out approximately $2.7 million in AUSD, ETH, and USDC, though native INIT tokens were unaffected. Despite an initial 14% drop following the exploit, INIT reversed its losses. Initia is investigating the incident alongside security teams, network validators, and exchanges.

Initia response and network halt

• ▪Initia halted its Layer 1 blockchain and interwoven rollups on October 23, 2026, following an unauthorized minting incident
• ▪Initia announced it is investigating the extent of an October 23, 2026 security incident alongside security teams, network validators, and cryptocurrency exchanges

Exploit details and assets stolen

• ▪Initia co-founder Ezaan Mangalji stated preliminary findings from Initia's investigation point to a previously unknown Day 0 bug in the network's MoveVM implementation on Cosmos SDK that enabled unauthorized token minting, which did not apply to native INIT tokens
• ▪Blockchain security researcher Spreek publicly flagged the unauthorized minting activity on Initia on October 23, 2026, which was confirmed via transactions on the official Initia explorer
• ▪Initia co-founder Ezaan Mangalji reported an attacker minted and bridged out approximately $2.7 million worth of AUSD, ETH, and USDC prior to Initia's network pause
• ▪On October 23, 2026, an unauthorized attacker executed an infinimint exploit on the Initia blockchain, minting uncapped tokens and swapping them for external assets

Initia architecture and history

• ▪Initia operates an interwoven rollup network built on the Cosmos SDK that supports both MoveVM and Ethereum Virtual Machine execution environments
• ▪Initia launched its mainnet in 2025 alongside its native token INIT, which features a maximum total supply of 1 billion tokens
• ▪Initia raised approximately $24 million in funding from venture capital investors including Binance Labs and Delphi Digital prior to an October 23, 2026 exploit
• ▪Initia completed multiple security audits prior to the October 23, 2026 Initia exploit, having previously resolved a 2025 INIT staking reward configuration error through governance