Shiba Inu’s Layer 2 network, Shibarium, has returned online following a $4 million exploit that forced developers to suspend operations. The restoration has fueled predictions of an SHIB rally as sentiment begins to turn bullish again.
Shibarium Recovers From $4M Exploit
In a recent blog post, the Shiba Inu team announced that it has restored activity on Shibarium after its recent exploit. The bridge was forced offline after a sophisticated exploit drained over $4.1 million in assets.
A hacker used a flash loan to obtain 4.6 million BONE, the network’s governance token, in order to attack Shibarium’s bridge to Ethereum. The attacker took control of 10 out of 12 validator keys by momentarily increasing their stake. This was sufficient to drive fraudulent checkpoints to the consensus layer of the chain, Heimdall.
Developers immediately triggered the bridge’s emergency shutdown, halting activity while a recovery plan was drawn up. Before reactivating the chain, the team worked with the security company Hexens.io for a period of 10 days to examine the infrastructure, verify modifications, and practice fixes.
Importantly, they managed to rescue the 4.6 million BONE tokens and rotate validator keys to prevent further breaches.
The Shiba Inu team described a number of steps intended to strengthen the bridge against potential assaults. Blacklisting dubious contracts was one of them. Through a collaboration with dRPC.org, they also consolidated RPC endpoints and increased withdrawal delays from one to thirty checkpoints.
More than 100 contracts were migrated to secure wallets, while new monitoring systems and playbooks were introduced to detect anomalies in real time.
Developers also decided against offering the attacker a bounty. They stated that the on-chain trail of stolen funds confirmed malicious intent. Rather, they concentrated on resuming bridge operations and checkpointing. Plans to reimburse impacted users are still in the works; specifics should be released after the refund system is complete.
Expert Predicts SHIB Rally
In a recent X post, a crypto analyst described SHIB as “heating up,” with on-chain signals pointing to reduced sell pressure. The recovery of Shibarium is also expected to restore investor confidence.
Adding to its bullish sentiment, whales have been accumulating SHIB. Data shows that over 62 billion tokens have been scooped up by whales. However, exchange reserves have continued to decline.
Another expert, Javon Marks, shared that the token’s technical indicators are hinting at a more than 150% recovery move toward $0.000032. According to him, a regular bullish divergence has formed, signaling growing buying momentum.
In previous developments, Shiba Inu developers have been upgrading the broader ecosystem. The community’s decentralized exchange, ShibaSwap, recently underwent a redesign that unifies multi-chain trading and enhances liquidity management.
Meanwhile, the developer hub for Shibarium was also enhanced with more precise documentation for node operators and builders. These upgrades are designed to encourage decentralization and increase transaction activity.