MAPO Token Crashes 96% After Hacker Mints a Quadrillion Tokens in Bridge Exploit

TLDR

• A hacker exploited the Butter Network cross-chain bridge to mint 1 quadrillion MAPO tokens
• MAPO’s price fell 96%, dropping from $0.003 to $0.0001 within hours
• The attacker dumped around 1 billion tokens, draining roughly 52 ETH (~$180,000) from Uniswap pools
• Map Protocol has paused its mainnet and is migrating to a new contract address
• A separate $2.68 million exploit hit the TON-TAC bridge on May 11, part of a wider wave of bridge attacks

A hacker exploited the Butter Network cross-chain bridge on Wednesday and minted one quadrillion MAPO tokens — roughly 100,000 times the entire legitimate supply. The attack sent the token’s price crashing 96% in a matter of hours.

MAPO, the native token of Map Protocol, fell from around $0.003 to $0.0001. Its market cap dropped below $1 million, wiping out nearly all holder value.

The attacker used a new externally-owned account to carry out the exploit. They first sent a legitimate oracle-signed message, then resubmitted a modified version that appeared identical in hash but was fake. The bridge verified it as valid and executed the massive mint.

No private keys were stolen. Security firm Blockaid confirmed it was a classic Solidity vulnerability involving multiple dynamic fields.

The attacker dumped around one billion of the minted tokens into Uniswap liquidity pools, draining about 52 ETH worth roughly $180,000. The remaining tokens — nearly a trillion — still sit in attacker-controlled wallets and continue to threaten other pools.

Map Protocol’s Response

Map Protocol said the bug was in the Solidity contract layer. The team has paused the mainnet and begun migration to a new contract.

The project says it will announce a new contract address and conduct an asset snapshot. Any tokens held in attacker wallets will be fully invalidated and excluded from the snapshot.

The Butter Network also paused its ButterSwap platform. It stated that user funds were not at risk.

A Wider Wave of Bridge Exploits

This attack is not an isolated event. At least 18 DeFi and blockchain protocols have been hit this month alone, including THORChain, Verus Protocol’s Ethereum bridge, Transit Finance, and Ekubo.

A separate attack hit the TON-TAC bridge on May 11. That exploit resulted in $2.68 million in losses and stemmed from missing validation in the sequencer software. About 80% of affected assets were recovered, but the bridge remains paused.

Cross-chain bridges require validating transactions across multiple blockchains, which creates a wide attack surface. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin flagged this weakness back in 2022, arguing that bridges are structurally less secure than the individual chains they connect.

Map Protocol is designed as an omnichain layer connecting Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Tron, and Solana — meaning its bridge infrastructure carries extra complexity and exposure.

For MAPO holders, the road ahead is difficult. Even if the team executes a clean migration, the overhang of trillions of illegitimate tokens creates a ceiling on any price recovery.

The attacker walked away with around $180,000 — a relatively small sum for an attack that effectively destroyed a token’s market value and exposed deep flaws in bridge security.

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