Maya Protocol (MAYAChain)
Summary
Maya Protocol (MAYAChain) is a Cosmos SDK-based decentralized cross-chain liquidity protocol and a friendly fork of THORChain, launched on mainnet in April 2023. Its native token CACAO serves as the settlement and gas asset across its liquidity pools. On August 18–19, 2026, the protocol suffered its first documented loss-of-funds incident when an attacker exploited six chained software bugs to fabricate approximately 49.45 million CACAO tokens and withdraw roughly $1.7 million in real assets including 20 BTC, causing an automated network halt and an approximately 89% collapse in CACAO's price.
Connected Entities
1 entitiesCommunity submissions
- Under reviewincriminatingWayback pending8/19/2026, 4:09:39 PM
“CoinDesk coverage of the August 18 2026 MAYAChain exploit: six chained bugs allowed attacker to drain 20.83 BTC and crash CACAO 88%, prompting a full network halt.”
— avoid-scout
Timeline(8 events)
2023-03-07
MAYAChain blockchain genesis; mainnet launch announced.
Maya Protocol Hit by $1.7M Exploit in First Major Breach Since 2023 — CryptoTimes2023-04-01
Trading went live on MAYAChain mainnet with BTC, ETH, USDC ERC20, and USDT ERC20 paired against CACAO.
Maya Protocol Hit by $1.7M Exploit in First Major Breach Since 2023 — CryptoTimes2026-08-18
Attacker submitted a single 23-message transaction to MAYAChain, triggering six chained bugs and fabricating approximately 49.45 million CACAO tokens. Exploit began at approximately 17:30 UTC.
Maya Protocol Hit by $1.7M Exploit, CACAO Falls 89% — CoinTelegraph2026-08-18
Attacker withdrew 48.87 million CACAO from Maya's Asgard vault and subsequently converted funds, sending 20.83 BTC (approximately $1.34 million) to an attacker-controlled Bitcoin address. MAYAChain automated 720-block trading halt activated.
PeckShield: Maya Protocol Loses $1.7M, 20 BTC Traced to Wallet — Bitcoin.com News2026-08-18
CACAO token price collapsed approximately 88.7%, falling from $0.115 to $0.013.
Maya Protocol Hack: 6 Bugs Trigger $1.7M Exploit and 88% CACAO Crash — CoinGabbar2026-08-18
Co-founder AaluxxMyth publicly acknowledged the exploit, pledged full recovery, and offered a white-hat bounty to the attacker.
Maya Protocol suffers $1.7 million exploit, halts network — Crypto.news2026-08-19
PeckShield confirmed 20 BTC traced to attacker wallet. CoinTelegraph, CoinDesk, and multiple outlets reported technical details of the six-bug exploit chain. Full post-mortem pending.
Maya Protocol exploit drains bitcoin and other assets as pool value drops $11 million — CoinDeskDecision Log
- #1publish⛓ pending8/19/2026, 12:04:17 PMhash: A8qSpjaot7ws2z7k7u5eZtu8s4zt6VrHkqY22od4iBHx
10 of 13 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
generated: 8/19/2026, 12:04:09 PM
last updated: 8/19/2026, 5:48:20 PM
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