Layer 1 blockchain Fogo halts mainnet after attacker receives 400 million FOGO tokens, 10% of circulating supply

Layer 1 blockchain Fogo halted its network on Saturday about 15 hours after the Fogo Foundation said an attacker received 400 million FOGO tokens, then worth about $3 million, in an incident the Foundation has yet to fully explain. 

The network was halted within the hour before Fogo's 12:29 p.m. ET announcement. Fogo said the pause would prevent further movement of the affected assets while validators upgraded the network. The project did not provide a restart time or explain how the restrictions would work.

In an earlier 9:13 p.m. ET post on Friday, the Foundation said an unknown actor had compromised the organization and sent 400 million tokens to "a bad actor." It said exchanges, law enforcement and forensic specialists had been notified.

"There is no impact to the Fogo blockchain, which continues to operate as normal," the Foundation said at the time. The Foundation has not detailed the attack vector or disclosed which addresses were targeted. 

Tokens represent 10% of FOGO's circulating supply

The 400 million tokens taken by the attacker account for 4% of FOGO's 10 billion-token genesis supply and more than 10% of its current circulating supply.

The tokens were worth about $3 million with FOGO trading near $0.0075 at the time of writing, according to DefiLlama data.

Bitget suspended FOGO deposits and withdrawals about an hour before Fogo's first public disclosure, describing the reason as wallet maintenance. KuCoin later announced a similar suspension.

A March guide on Fogo's website claimed that its mainnet had maintained 100% uptime since launch. That claim had not been updated following Saturday's halt.

Fogo launched its mainnet in January after a $7 million Binance token sale conducted at a $350 million valuation, The Block previously reported. The project markets itself as a high-speed Layer 1 for onchain trading, targeting 40-millisecond block times and reduced exposure to maximal extractable value (MEV).

This is a developing story.