Taiko’s bridge is back. The Ethereum layer-2 reopened deposits and withdrawals Thursday after an 11-day shutdown triggered by a $1.7 million exploit.
The project says every affected user has been made whole. Remaining withdrawal limits are temporary safeguards — normal usage shouldn’t be impacted.
Here’s what happened: on June 21, an attacker compromised Taiko’s chain-state verification mechanism. They forged proofs, tricking the system into accepting unauthorized withdrawals from the Ethereum vault. Security firms put the losses at up to $1.7 million.
Taiko laid out a four-stage recovery plan. Fixes were deployed. The network’s finalized state was checked for any leftover forged checkpoints or attacker claims — all clear. Security experts reviewed the changes. Then the bridge was replenished so every asset on the network was backed 1:1 by assets on Ethereum.
Conservative withdrawal quotas were added as an extra precaution. Taiko hasn’t said exactly how much those caps are, but claims they won’t block normal bridge transactions.
One missing detail: Taiko hasn’t explained how the 1:1 backing was restored or whether any stolen funds were recovered. They’ve promised a full postmortem.
TAIKO tokens briefly jumped to $0.35 after the bridge reopened, then settled back around $0.14. Market reaction was cautious — understandable given the circumstances.
