Incident All ledgers
Liquid Network: $320.0m
Liquid Network lost $320.0m on 6 September 2026. Ranked 12th of 1,272 crypto failures, with method, returned funds and comparable incidents.
- Date
- 6 September 2026
- Lost
- $320.0m
- Returned or repaid
- None recorded
- Target
- Chain
- Category
- Bridge & Cross-Chain
- Method
- Unbacked Cross-Chain Mint
- Chains
- Liquid
An actor exploited a vulnerability in Elements, Liquid's underlying software, to mint about 4,000 unbacked L-BTC, then redeemed it through SideSwap's peg-out, prompting the Liquid Federation to release about 3,996 BTC (roughly $320 million). Liquid and SideSwap say no keys were compromised.
Against the ledger
- It ranks 12th of the 1,272 incidents with a known loss, and 3rd in 2026.
- It accounts for 43.5% of the $735.8m in known losses in September 2026.
- 56 incidents in the ledger are classified as Bridge & Cross-Chain, for $1.53bn in total. This one is 20.9% of that.
- The ledger records no returned funds.
Other incidents named Liquid
| Date | Target | Lost | Type | Method | Returned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Aug 2021 | Liquid Global | $91.3m | CEX | Hot Wallet Key Compromised | — |
| 11 Sept 2026 | ether.fi Liquid | $43,260 | DeFi Protocol | Arbitrary External Call | — |
Closest in size by the same method
| Date | Target | Lost | Type | Method | Returned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 06 Oct 2022 | Binance Bridge | $570.0m | DeFi Protocol | Proof Verifier Bug | — |
| 18 Apr 2026 | Kelp | $293.0m | DeFi Protocol | Cross-Chain Message Spoofing | — |
| 01 Aug 2022 | Nomad | $190.0m | DeFi Protocol | Forged Proof | — |
| 16 May 2018 | Bitcoin Gold | $18.0m | Chain | Forged Proof | — |
| 04 Oct 2021 | pNetwork | $13.0m | DeFi Protocol | Spoofed Event Log | — |
All failures in 2026 · The failures ledger
Amounts are DefiLlama’s estimates and can change as incidents are revalued. Its returned figure can include money a company repaid itself, not only funds recovered from attackers. Source: DefiLlama.
Cite this Bitminer.io, “Liquid Network, failures ledger”, data to 2 November 2026, https://bitminer.io/ledger/incident/liquid-network-2026-09-06/. How this is built