Token Crash

TAC token crashes 80% in one session, two months after white hat hack

Blockchain Bridge Hack, Cryptocurrency, Market Volatility, TAC Protocol, Token Crash, TON Blockchain, White-Hat

BlockchainJuly 7, 2026·5 min read

TAC Protocol’s native token collapsed 82% in a single day to $0.0056, erasing $100 million in market value just eight weeks after the team rebranded a $2.8 million bridge hack as a “white-hat incident” and restored cross-chain functionality. The crash raises fresh questions about whether institutional investors can rely on TAC’s governance disclosures and security narrative as it scales the first EVM-compatible blockchain built for TON and Telegram.

TAC token fell 81.8% in 24 hours to $0.005596, from an intraday high of $0.05285.
Token trades 92% below its June 30 peak of $0.06688, wiping out recent gains entirely.
No official explanation released; price collapse followed a June 30 mandatory network upgrade to v1.6.0.

82% Single-day percentage decline in TAC token price from open to close
$66.6M Trading volume in crash session, tenfold increase from prior day
92% Token discount from all-time high set one week before collapse

TAC Protocol’s native token experienced a severe selloff on what appears to be the first major test of market confidence since the project’s July 2025 mainnet launch. The token dropped from around $0.05285 to $0.005596 in a single trading session, erasing approximately $100 million in market capitalization and leaving the token worth just $26.2 million at the low point.

Trading volume surged to $66.6 million, more than ten times the prior day’s activity, signaling panic liquidations rather than orderly profit-taking.

The timing of the collapse is notable for what it exposes about institutional risk appetite around TON ecosystem infrastructure. TAC’s mainnet went live in July 2025 with prominent protocols including Morpho, Curve, and Euler deployed at genesis, backed by an $800 million liquidity campaign designed to attract developers and traders.

The token itself traded near its all-time high of $0.06688 just days before the crash, suggesting the market had largely moved past the spring security incident. The 82% single-session decline contradicts that narrative entirely.

Bridge Hack Rebranded as White-Hat Two Months Before Token Collapse

TAC’s security story took a sharp turn in May when an attacker exploited the cross-chain bridge connecting TON and TAC, extracting $2.8 million in stablecoins and wrapped assets. The incident affected USDT, BLUM, and tsTON balances on the TON side of the bridge, while TAC’s native token and ERC-20 assets remained untouched.

The team halted the bridge immediately and disclosed the incident to the public on May 11.

By May 15, TAC announced a resolution that dramatically reframed the security failure. The attacker returned approximately 90% of the stolen funds, roughly $2.52 million, in what the team described as a settlement that allowed the hacker to keep 10% of the loot as a bounty.

Rather than pursue legal remedies or classify the incident as a theft, TAC’s leadership decided to treat it as a white-hat hack after consulting with security partners and law enforcement. That decision to forgo prosecution and accept the loss of $280,000 became the official narrative.

The rebranding raised questions about TAC’s approach to accountability and investor protection. Institutional participants in bridge protocols typically expect either full recovery of stolen assets, pursuit of legal recourse, or at minimum transparent investigation and remediation.

The decision to accept a 10% permanent loss without evident legal proceedings suggested either that law enforcement had determined recovery was infeasible or that TAC’s leadership had decided not to pursue it. No public statement from law enforcement or security auditors substantiated the white-hat framing.

Bridge Restoration Followed by Mandatory Network Upgrade Before Crash

TAC kept its bridge offline for thirty days while it patched the sequencer software and submitted the fix for external review. The company’s auditor and TON ecosystem partners conducted the review, and on June 10 the team re-enabled cross-chain transfers between TON and the TAC network.

However, the team disclosed that the patched sequencer produced 316 duplicate transactions during the repair process, a sign that the upgrade had not been seamless.

Just twenty days after restoring bridge functionality, TAC issued a mandatory network upgrade notice. On June 29, the team instructed all node operators to install a v1.6.0 binary ahead of a scheduled upgrade at block 21,776,800 on June 30. No rationale, technical explanation, or public roadmap was provided for the upgrade.

The timing proved critical: the price collapse occurred on or shortly after that June 30 block height, suggesting the upgrade may have triggered the selloff or coincided with the market’s loss of confidence in the project.

Institutional investors and developers running nodes on TAC faced a choice between implementing an unexplained mandatory upgrade or falling out of sync with the network. The lack of transparency around the upgrade’s purpose, whether it addressed another security issue, a performance problem, or a consensus failure, left market participants guessing.

The surge in trading volume and the dramatic price decline suggest that news of the upgrade, or its consequences once deployed, triggered a confidence crisis.

Open Questions on Project Governance as TAC Scales Infrastructure Role

TAC’s role as the first EVM-compatible blockchain built specifically for TON means its security and reliability directly affect Telegram’s blockchain adoption strategy. The TON ecosystem has positioned itself as a mass-market entry point to crypto, with native wallet integration and Telegram’s 500+ million user base as distribution channels.

Any infrastructure failure or governance lapse at TAC threatens that entire narrative and could damage confidence in TON-based applications more broadly.

As of this report, TAC has not published an official statement explaining the token collapse, the June 30 upgrade, or any related incidents.

The absence of communication from project leadership during a severe market event is itself a governance failure and suggests either that the team was caught off guard by the market reaction or that it was dealing with an undisclosed technical or security issue.

Institutional investors holding TAC or deploying capital on the network have no clear visibility into the root cause or remediation status.

The crash also raises questions about the durability of the white-hat narrative. If the May bridge hack was truly a resolved security matter with the attacker acting in good faith, the June 30 upgrade should have been routine maintenance or feature deployment.

Instead, the timing and lack of disclosure suggest either that the May incident was not fully resolved or that a separate security issue emerged. Either scenario undermines TAC’s credibility with institutional counterparties who depend on transparency and proactive disclosure.

Institutional investors and node operators should monitor TAC’s official X account and project communications for a formal statement on the June 30 upgrade, the cause of the token collapse, and any security or consensus issues that may have triggered it. Until the team provides a detailed technical post-mortem and a clear remediation timeline, the project remains in credibility crisis. Any further silence beyond the next 48-72 hours will likely deepen the selloff and accelerate developer migration to competing TON infrastructure.

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edgeX pledges refunds to EDGE holders after 70% token crash, denies role in collapse

Blockchain Blockchain Investigation, Cryptocurrency Liquidations, DeFi Exchange, EDGE Token, edgeX, Market Manipulation, Token Crash

DeFiJune 3, 2026·5 min read

EdgeX has committed to refunding users affected by a 70% crash in its EDGE token on June 1-2, but blockchain investigators dispute the exchange’s claim that external manipulation caused the collapse, instead pointing to concentrated insider ownership as the likely culprit. The refund pledge, capped at 100,000 USDC per user, underscores mounting institutional scrutiny of token distribution practices and the risks posed by thin floats in derivative venues.

EDGE crashed 70% from $1.14 to $0.366 on June 1-2, triggering $2.81 million in liquidations across long and short positions.
EdgeX announced refunds capped at 100,000 USDC per user, to be distributed seven days after verification, calling it goodwill compensation.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT disputed the exchange’s external manipulation narrative, citing concentrated insider supply control matching patterns seen in prior token collapses.

70% EDGE token crash from peak to trough during single trading session
$2.81M in liquidations triggered, against prior stable token valuation period
100,000 USDC maximum refund cap per affected user regardless of actual loss size

The EDGE token of derivatives exchange edgeX experienced a catastrophic one-hour collapse on June 2 UTC, falling from approximately $1.12 to $0.32 before stabilizing between $0.63 and $0.71 over subsequent hours.

The June 1-2 session saw the token plunge from a starting price near $1.14 to a low of $0.366, a 70% peak-to-trough decline that forced liquidations totaling $2.81 million, including $1.96 million in long positions and roughly $849,000 in short positions.

By June 3, EDGE was trading near $0.69 with a market capitalization around $242 million against a circulating supply of 350 million tokens out of 1 billion maximum, meaning the token had recovered partially from its intraday low but remained substantially underwater from pre-crash levels.

EdgeX attributes collapse to external market manipulation while dismissing insider involvement

In statements issued in the early hours of June 2 UTC, edgeX ruled out any technical failure, saying the exchange had not been hacked, exploited, or breached.

The exchange attributed the crash to deliberate market-price manipulation by external actors and rejected community suspicions about a specific smart contract address that users had flagged as suspicious, stating it belonged to edgeX itself and served only for user deposits and withdrawals.

This framing, that outside market participants engineered the sell-off rather than internal stakeholders, became the centerpiece of edgeX’s public defense in the hours immediately following the crash.

On June 3, edgeX announced a refund program for affected users, framing it as goodwill compensation that would match individual losses. The exchange stated that eligible users would receive refunds seven days after verification, but imposed a hard cap of 100,000 USDC per individual user, meaning that any trader who lost more than that amount would receive only partial reimbursement.

The refund pledge represented an attempt to restore confidence in the platform and signal that edgeX accepted responsibility for customer losses, even while maintaining that external actors caused the price collapse rather than any internal mismanagement or structural flaw.

ZachXBT questions concentrated ownership structure identical to prior token collapses

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT responded directly to edgeX’s public statements, rejecting the external manipulation narrative and instead highlighting concentrated insider supply control.

ZachXBT stated that “EDGE supply was being controlled by a few insiders with a low float” and called on the project to publicly name “the counterparties / MM agreements which lead to these events,” effectively challenging edgeX to disclose its market-making arrangements and key token holders.

This framing shifted focus from whether market manipulation occurred toward who held the power to manipulate, and whether those actors bore any relationship to edgeX’s leadership or founding team.

ZachXBT’s skepticism carried weight because of his prior investigative work on similar token collapses. In April, he investigated the RAVE token and found that addresses linked to the initial token distribution controlled approximately 95% of the supply before RAVE experienced a crash exceeding 95% from its peak.

ZachXBT then connected that pattern, extreme concentration among insiders, thin public float, sudden price collapse, to several other tokens including RIVER, SIREN, MYX, and SKYAI. Each of these incidents involved dramatic losses for retail traders while insiders retained or gradually exited large positions. The consistency of this pattern suggested a playbook rather than isolated accidents.

Analytics firm BubbleMaps also contributed to scrutiny by flagging SIREN’s concentrated ownership structure weeks before that token’s market capitalization fell from $1.52 billion, demonstrating that concentrated distribution was both identifiable in advance and predictive of subsequent collapses.

Institutional investors face widening concerns about derivative venue token risks

The edgeX incident raises material questions for institutional market participants evaluating exposure to derivative exchange tokens.

Exchange tokens have become common fundraising and governance tools, but when a small number of insiders retain large stakes relative to public float, the token becomes vulnerable to rapid devaluation if insiders face margin calls, liquidity needs, or incentives to exit.

Derivative venues like edgeX face additional structural risk: if the exchange token itself crashes sharply, it may undermine confidence in the platform’s financial stability or governance credibility, potentially triggering customer withdrawals or trading volume declines that feed back into additional losses.

The 100,000 USDC refund cap represents a compromise between edgeX’s willingness to acknowledge customer losses and its apparent inability or unwillingness to absorb the full cost of compensation.

Some traders who held positions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at peak prices would recover only a fraction of their losses, raising questions about whether the refund was intended primarily to address retail outrage or to meet any formal obligation.

The seven-day verification window and the requirement for affected users to claim refunds also means that not all losses may be compensated if some users do not submit claims or fail verification.

For institutional investors, the incident highlights the need for due diligence on token distribution and insider holdings before committing capital to exchange platforms or their governance tokens. It also underscores the speed at which concentrated supply can create single-hour liquidity crises that force mass liquidations, regardless of underlying exchange fundamentals.

The key question remaining unresolved is whether edgeX will publicly disclose its market-making agreements, insider token holders, and vesting schedules, the transparency that ZachXBT explicitly demanded, or whether the exchange will treat the refund announcement as sufficient closure. Regulatory bodies and rival exchanges will likely be monitoring whether edgeX faces enforcement action or reputational consequences that affect its ability to attract institutional market makers or custody integrations.

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