The most ridiculous heist? Hackers mint $DOT worth 1 billion USD, but only stole $230k due to "this reason"

Cryptocurrency attack incidents are emerging one after another, but cases like this of “taking big risks to earn small profits” are quite rare. Earlier today (13th), a hacker exploited a vulnerability in the Hyperbridge cross-chain bridge to mint 1 billion Polkadot (DOT) tokens out of thin air on Ethereum, with a nominal value of up to $1.19 billion. However, when he tried to sell these tokens, due to severe liquidity shortages, he only managed to exchange them for about $237k worth of Ether. It should be clarified that the target of the hacker attack was the “cross-chain bridge smart contract,” so the native DOT tokens on the Polkadot mainnet were not affected. The main cause of this vulnerability was that Hyperbridge’s EthereumHost contract failed to properly verify the authenticity of messages before passing cross-chain information to the TokenGateway.

Bridged $DOT (@Polkadot) just got exploited on @ethereum.

Control was swapped to the attacker’s contract, then 1B $DOT was minted and instantly dumped. Price cratered from $1.22 to tiny fractions of a cent.https://t.co/ECDT0RaHE9 pic.twitter.com/WUwxjtsNwr

— Onchain Lens (@OnchainLens) April 13, 2026

Cross-chain bridges have always been the most vulnerable link in blockchain architecture because they hold management permissions over token contracts. Once the verification mechanism is breached, hackers can easily gain the power to mint unlimited tokens. Attack methods: forging messages, seizing management rights, unlimited minting On-chain tracking shows that the hacker submitted a forged message via dispatchIncoming and successfully directed it to TokenGateway.onAccept. The system should have verified the authenticity of this message based on the status on the Polkadot chain, but the verification mechanism recorded the promise value as “all zeros,” which means the verification process was completely bypassed or nonexistent. As a result, the system mistakenly treated this fake message as a legitimate command. The accepted message immediately executed the changeAdmin function on the bridged Polkadot token contract, transferring admin rights to the attacker’s address. After gaining management control, the attacker minted 1 billion DOT tokens in a single transaction, then used Odos Router V3 to deposit these tokens into the DOT-ETH trading pool on Uniswap V4. After multiple exchanges at slightly different prices, he ultimately withdrew about 108.2 ETH. “Lack of liquidity” becomes a protective shield In financial markets, “lack of liquidity” is usually a headache for whales and large traders, but ironically, in this case, the liquidity shortage became an invisible shield, greatly limiting the hacker’s profit potential. Because the liquidity depth of DOT on Ethereum is extremely limited, it cannot absorb the 1 billion tokens minted out of thin air. When the hacker hurried to sell and cash out, severe slippage caused the actual price per token to fall below one cent. In a market with deeper liquidity or higher-value bridging assets, the same vulnerability could cause losses dozens of times greater. As of the time of writing, DOT’s trading price is about $1.17, down 5% in the past 24 hours. This incident again demonstrates that even if hackers have “unlimited minting rights,” whether they can successfully arbitrage ultimately depends on market liquidity and trading depth. The well-known blockchain security firm CertiK later confirmed the attack and stated that the hacker profited about $237k by minting and selling the bridged tokens. As of now, Hyperbridge’s official response to the hacker incident has not been publicly released.

#CertiKInsight 🚨

We have seen an exploit on the @hyperbridge gateway contract. https://t.co/h27iDm1JGd

The attacker slipped through a forged message to change the admin of Polkadot token contract on Ethereum and profited ~$237K from minting and selling 1B tokens.

Stay… pic.twitter.com/3t2n4uq5hy

— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) April 13, 2026