Layer-1 blockchain Cronos released a post-mortem on Tuesday detailing the Tectonic lending-protocol exploit, saying approximately $120.4 million in borrowing activity was generated through manipulated collateral values.
Of that total, about $111.2 million was reversed when the network was restored to its pre-exploit state. The remaining $9.19 million — roughly 7.6% of affected funds — was transferred off Cronos before validators halted the chain.
The disclosure raised earlier estimates of the incident's scale. Cronos initially placed the affected amount at roughly $75 million, and blockchain-data provider Bitquery had previously traced about $8.3 million moving to Ethereum.
According to the post-mortem, the attacker deposited $5 million and then executed a 98-cycle loop, repeatedly borrowing and redepositing TONIC while purchasing the thinly traded token. The strategy pushed TONIC's price up nearly 300 times as Tectonic's price feed tracked the inflated quote.
Tectonic flagged the anomalous activity at 12:49 UTC on Aug. 30. Validators halted the network at 14:32:47 UTC. Block production resumed at 23:49:01 UTC once balances were restored.
Earlier reporting indicated one transaction emptied nine Tectonic lending markets across 11 transfers involving stablecoins, Bitcoin, Ether and other assets.
