Qubic freezes chain after 1,400 wallets drained by weak seeds

Qubic halted its layer-1 network Sunday after an attacker used weakly generated wallet seeds to drain approximately $1.4 million from more than 1,400 accounts, according to Cointelegraph’s report. The network stopped at tick 85,371,949.

The stolen balance was 2.94 trillion Qubit (QU). Qubic said 87.1% of the drained funds never left its network and remain frozen on-chain. The remaining 12.9% went to MEXC, whose team froze the receiving account within about an hour, Qubic said.

That split works out to roughly 2.56 trillion QU still frozen on Qubic and about 379.26 billion QU sent to MEXC. The calculation uses Qubic’s stated 2.94 trillion QU total and its 87.1%/12.9% division.

Where the seed flaw sat

The vulnerability affected wallet seeds generated in any browser on an iPhone or iPad, in Safari on a Mac until Oct. 18, 2026, or in the Qubic iOS app before July 2025, according to Cointelegraph’s account of Qubic’s disclosure.

The affected surface was seed generation, rather than a smart-contract drain. A GitHub commit for Qubic web-wallet version 4.26.4 shows the project replaced JavaScript’sMath.random() with the cryptographically securecrypto.getRandomValues() when creating wallet seeds. Qubic has said the latest web-wallet version contains the fix.

The distinction matters for holders because the relevant exposure is tied to how and when a wallet seed was created. A wallet generated through one of the listed Apple-browser or older iOS-app paths falls within the affected scope identified by Qubic; the fact sheet does not state whether every such wallet was drained or provide a deadline for moving remaining balances.

Qubic’s core team is identifying affected wallets and preparing recovery options for a vote by the network’s Computors. The chain’s restart date and the exact recovery process were not given in the account available at publication.

Frozen funds and protocol choice

Qubic supports transactions and smart contracts without fees and uses Useful Proof of Work, or UPoW, a consensus mechanism that repurposes mining energy to train artificial intelligence. Its token had a market capitalization of about $62.6 million at the time of writing, according to Cointelegraph.

Using Qubic’s reported $1.4 million loss and $62.6 million market capitalization, the drained amount equaled about 2.24% of the token’s stated market value. That comparison is arithmetic, not a measure of the eventual market impact: the majority of the stolen funds remained frozen, and the MEXC-held portion was also frozen.

The response also places control of recovery in the network’s governance process. Qubic’s team is identifying wallets and preparing options, but the fact sheet does not state which wallets will qualify, how balances will be valued, or whether recovery will cover the full reported loss.

How it compares with other exploits

The Qubic loss is smaller than the approximately $320 million exploit on Liquid Network on Sept. 6, when about 3,996 BTC$82,666.00▲1.31% BTC left the federation wallet after a range-proof cache flaw in Elements, according to The Crypto Times. At roughly $1.4 million, Qubic’s reported loss was about 0.44% of Liquid’s.

It was closer in size to Notional Finance, where an escrow contract worth about $1.73 million was drained on Sept. 4 through an integer-overflow issue involving an unsafe signed-to-unsigned downcast. XRPH Wallet had 4,011 user wallets emptied on Sept. 3, with approximately $452,000 in XRP and other tokens stolen after a design flaw in its staking feature.

The seed pattern also has a documented history in the fact sheet. Coldcard disclosed in July 2026 that attackers stole funds from wallets whose seeds were weakened by a firmware bug. In 2023, similar flaws affected Trust Wallet’s browser extension and Libbitcoin Explorer.

AMLBot’s 2026 investigations report put hacks and exploits at 19% of crypto crime cases in the third quarter but 40% of reported losses. Qubic’s incident adds a smaller-value exploit to that category while showing the operational consequence of a weak seed generator: a chain halt at a specific tick, frozen balances, and a recovery vote still to come.