MANTRA Confirms $3.6M Loss From Cosmos EVM Vulnerability
Cosmos (ATOM)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
bitcoinworld.co.in reports that MANTRA has confirmed a security incident resulting in a loss of approximately $3.6 million. The breach occurred on August 20 and originated from a balance deduction flaw within the Cosmos EVM module. This vulnerability allowed attackers to exploit how balances were deducted, enabling unauthorized transfers from a burn address and a genesis multisig address.
About 721 million MANTRA tokens were moved from these addresses during the exploit. The team executed a network upgrade that successfully froze 37.96 million MANTRA tokens to prevent further unauthorized movement. However, the remaining stolen tokens had already been transferred to various exchanges.
Authorities are currently cooperating in the investigation, though no funds have been recovered as of now. MANTRA is strengthening monitoring of abnormal accounts and enhancing security protocols to mitigate future risks. The incident highlights the persistent risks in the DeFi space where even audited modules can contain critical flaws.
Rapid response mechanisms proved effective with the freeze, but full recovery remains uncertain. This event underscores the importance of rigorous security audits for projects bridging traditional finance with blockchain.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for ATOM, measured when this story was written up on 28 August 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
ATOM is trading at $1.56 with a 24-hour buy ratio of 55.0%, indicating that buyers are slightly more active than sellers over the full day. This buying pressure is consistent across shorter timeframes, with the 1-hour and 4-hour buy ratios sitting at 54.9% and 55.2% respectively. The volume delta shows positive net buying, with +$16,207 in the last hour, +$39,040 over four hours, and +$222,887 over 24 hours. A positive volume delta means that the total volume of buy orders has exceeded sell orders during these periods. The cumulative volume delta (CVD) for the 24-hour close is +$51,798, confirming that net buying has accumulated throughout the day. Buying pressure appears stable rather than building or fading, as the short-term ratios closely mirror the daily average.
The latest daily buy ratio of 44.7% sits at the 9th percentile of the last 322 days, against a median of 49.8% - among the weakest buying days it has had.
Twenty-four hours later
What ATOM did over the 24 hours after the story broke. The market moves for its own reasons; this is what happened, not what the story caused.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for ATOM, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
Over the preceding week, ATOM saw a 7-day average buy ratio of 51.3%, making today’s 55.0% reading an unusual day with +3.7 points above the average. Spot volume today was $2,250,524, which is 0.76x the weekly average, indicating lower than usual trading activity. The coin experienced a price change of +3.2% over the past eight days, with a total volume delta of +$637,359. Net buying occurred on 5 of the 7 days in the preceding week. While buying pressure is stronger than the weekly norm today, the overall volume suggests a quieter market compared to the typical weekly baseline.