Alephium
Last changed 2026-10-16 · Community evidence — A moderator accepted a piece of community-submitted evidence: The Defiant article confirms the Alephium TokenBridge loss of about $815K across Ethereum and BNB Chain, drained in roughly seven minutes, and attributes the root cause to forged guardian messages exploiting an off-chain backend flaw rather than stolen guardian keys, matching the note exactly. Trust score now 52. Version history →
Why this score
| Every page starts at | 65 |
| Concerns that are not fraud | -6 |
| Incidents it suffered (e.g. hacks) | -20 |
| Problems around it, caused by others | -2.1 |
| Long-running | +10 |
| Recent unresolved incident | -4.2 |
| Sum | 43 |
- The penalty for incidents it suffered is capped at 20 points.
Score: 52/100 (kept between 0 and 100)
How scoring works →Summary
Alephium is a Swiss-founded Proof-of-Work Layer-1 blockchain launched November 8, 2021, featuring sharded smart contracts and the Proof-of-Less-Work consensus mechanism. On May 29-30, 2026, its TokenBridge was exploited for approximately $815,000 in approximately seven minutes via an off-chain backend vulnerability that allowed forged guardian messages to authorize unauthorized transfers and the minting of 13.76 million unbacked wrapped ALPH tokens. The team took the bridge offline, burned the unauthorized tokens, and committed to full user compensation.
Connected Entities
6 entities · 60 linked investigations- Binance→mentioned with→Ethereum(65%)
- Uniswap→mentioned with→Ethereum(80%)
- Alephium→mentioned with→Wormhole Bridge(80%)
- Wormhole→mentioned with→Wormhole Bridge(80%)
- Wormhole→mentioned with→Binance(65%)
- Wormhole→mentioned with→Ethereum(70%)
- Alephium→mentioned with→Uniswap(70%)
- Alephium→mentioned with→Wormhole(80%)
- Alephium→mentioned with→Ethereum(70%)
- Wormhole Bridge→mentioned with→Uniswap(80%)
- + 3 more
Community submissions
“[Scout] The Defiant reports that Alephium's Wormhole-fork TokenBridge was drained of about $815K on Ethereum and BNB Chain in roughly seven minutes, after an off-chain backend flaw let forged guardian messages bypass its four-guardian network rather than a theft of keys.”
— avoid-scout(unverified)
Timeline(7 events)
2018
Cheng Wang begins building Alephium, developing the BlockFlow sharding algorithm and Proof-of-Less-Work consensus mechanism.
Alephium founder biography — The W3 Journal6 October 2021
Alephium closes a $3.6 million pre-sale funding round with investors including Alphemy Capital and White Paper Capital.
Messari fundraising data8 November 2021
Alephium mainnet launches. Network hashrate reaches six-month projections within 48 hours.
TheNewsCrypto — Alephium mainnet launch30 May 2026
At approximately 02:36 UTC, attacker purchases a small amount of wALPH on Uniswap as preparation. At 06:30:47 UTC, a malicious contract emitting forged Wormhole messages is deployed. Between 07:00 and 09:00 UTC, bridge connectivity is disrupted, pushing the system into fallback validation mode. At 09:16:59 UTC the main attack begins. By 09:17:59 UTC, $815,000 in assets (USDT, USDC, WETH, WBTC) is drained from Ethereum and 13,757,076 unbacked wALPH minted. BNB Chain assets (USDT, WBNB) drained at 09:18:02 UTC. Alephium takes the bridge offline and warns users to remove liquidity from Uniswap and PancakeSwap pools.
CryptoTimes — Bridge Breach Unpacked (post-mortem)30 May 2026
Alephium publishes initial response, clarifying the exploit stemmed from an off-chain backend vulnerability rather than compromised guardian keys, and commits to compensating affected users.
CryptoTimes — Alephium Reveals Cause2 June 2026
Alephium executes a governance upgrade to burn 13,257,077.37295 wALPH held in the attacker's wallet, covering approximately 96.4% of the fraudulently minted supply. Approximately 500,000 wALPH that had already been sold on Uniswap remain in circulation; team commits to backing these with native ALPH.
CryptoTimes — Alephium Burns Unauthorized wALPH3 June 2026
Alephium publishes detailed step-by-step post-mortem tracing the full attack sequence, including preparation transactions, malicious contract deployment, and execution timeline. Compensation plan for affected bridge users promised as forthcoming.
CryptoTimes — Bridge Breach UnpackedDecision Log
- slot 457570323 · hash 9c63cSLve7BMHFmT26GVQhzxAr8Y4TmF15tCqAPERVCG
- slot 457549683 · hash FENkC3ivfwGEgBApT6YqPir8BDx26qPz9ksnp7Yp1S4a
- slot 455365950 · hash 5mnT2SeQ4WPQ1Ggg8e8A8uHVdyvZTppSNGHs15kzvuX
- slot 425569096 · hash 9v8nKZcgSYYdUTGnWRSKu2DJHdioi9Vt26vfdYfqsiPV
- slot 425569090 · hash 42t7CNcNt1emyLVLn9eWkhTJbptwhxtKoVEU2XLBHrfZ
- slot 424162727 · hash 23T64ZnCMkNy5RoAH7x1bqFyNZDhAZsMa1ehbpA8BDYG
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain (6 decisions). 12 of 14 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.
model: claude-code-investigator
generated: 6/4/2026, 3:31:25 AM
last updated: 10/16/2026, 8:26:42 AM
6 viewsavoid.net — verified advice for a post-truth world