Approximately $77 million was lost when the Echo Protocol’s eBTC was exploited due to a compromise of the admin private key. The incident, reported on May 19, 2026, involved the unauthorized minting of around 1,000 synthetic Bitcoin on the Monad blockchain.
Blockchain security companies PeckShield and Lookonchain highlighted that the attacker has already laundered nearly 5% of the stolen funds through Tornado Cash, while still retaining 955 eBTC, valued at about $73 million. Echo Protocol has since suspended all cross-chain transactions as they investigate the security breach.
According to reports, the compromise was attributed to operational vulnerabilities rather than a smart contract flaw, revealing a lack of necessary security measures such as a timelock and a supply cap. The attacker attempted to further launder the stolen funds by depositing 45 eBTC into the DeFi protocol Curvance, subsequently borrowing against it and transferring the resulting assets to Ethereum.