Truebit token wiped out, losing 99.9% after hacker drains $26.6M in Ether.

Truebit’s TRU Token Plummets After $26.6M Ethereum Hack

Truebit’s TRU token crashed nearly 100% on Thursday after an attacker drained around 8,535 ETH — roughly $26.6 million — from the protocol’s reserves, according to on-chain data and independent researchers.

The exploit leveraged a flaw in a legacy smart contract, enabling the hacker to mint TRU at virtually no cost and sell it back to the bonding-curve reserve, steadily extracting Ether. Analysts describe the attack as repeated buy-and-sell loops that took advantage of mispricing as the reserve balance shifted. The hacker reportedly paid a small builder bribe to prioritize transactions.

Truebit, an Ethereum-based verification and computation protocol, confirmed the incident, stating it is working with law enforcement and taking steps to address the situation.

Researchers traced the vulnerability to a contract deployed around five years ago, where unusually large purchases could return a zero cost. The exploit wiped out TRU liquidity, sending the token down as much as 99.9%.

The incident underscores the risks posed by legacy smart contracts. Even with updated code, older deployments with outdated pricing logic or links to reserves can remain vulnerable. Truebit has yet to publish a full post-mortem or confirm whether affected contracts have been paused.