Crypto.com-affiliated Cronos blockchain halted after Tectonic theft

The ostensibly decentralized Cronos blockchain was halted after a price manipulation attack allowed an attacker to borrow more than $75 million against nearly worthless collateral from the Tectonic lending platform. The attacker pumped the price of the thinly traded TONIC token, the native token of Tectonic, then borrowed against it. The attacker cashed out approximately $6 million by bridging it to Ethereum before the Cronos chain was halted, limiting their profits. The blockchain was offline for almost 24 hours, during which time it was rolled back to a block prior to the hack — essentially undoing all the transactions that occurred after that block.Cronos was launched by the exchange Crypto.com in 2021, and although the two entities are technically separate, they remain very closely linked. Because the Cronos chain is maintained by a relatively small number of validators, many controlled by Crypto.com, it was relatively easy to halt the chain — though the move was criticized by…