Liquid Network Hack

Reported loss $320M
Liquid
Other

What happened

On September 6, 2026, attackers used a Liquid Network validation flaw to create unbacked L-BTC and redeem it for roughly $320 million in real BTC from the federation reserve. By September 9, Chainalysis reported that 85% of the withdrawn BTC had been returned after Blockstream deployed updated software, while about $47 million remained outstanding.

How it happened

  1. The attackers crafted distinct confidential-transaction proof inputs that could produce the same undelimited rangeproof-cache key.
  2. They primed the verification cache with a valid proof context, then submitted an invalidly structured proof that hit the cached entry instead of being cryptographically verified.
  3. This allowed creation of unbacked L-BTC.
  4. The attackers routed the unbacked L-BTC through peg-out transactions and received real BTC from the federation reserve.

Protocol details

Classification Other / Bridge & Cross-Chain
Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Category Bridge Hack
Implementation language C++
Protocol links Website @Liquid_BTC

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Price at Hack $1.18
Market Cap at Hack $6.2M
Reported loss / token market cap 100.00%
Token Categories
Optimism Ecosystem Yield-Bearing Tokens

Funds Recovery

83.8%

Recovered

$268.0M

Net Loss

$51,840,000

Post-Incident Timeline

  • 2026-09-08

    The white hat returned 3,400 BTC (~$268M) to Liquid, keeping 598.5 BTC (~$47M), which is 15% of the total amount.

Evidence

Same attack technique

Browse all hacks →
Nomic Nomic nBTC Bridge $3.1M lost

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