BounceBit Shuts Layer 1, Moves BB to BNB Chain After $3 Million Exploit

BounceBit launched in 2024 as a bitcoin restaking protocol before expanding into CeDeFi yield strategies and tokenized real-world assets. The exploit exposed an authorization flaw in the Evmos stack underpinning its standalone Layer 1, allowing transactions to draw funds from accounts without valid consent. With Evmos discontinued in May 2026 and much of BounceBit’s product base already accessible on BNB Chain, the company decided that rebuilding the network was no longer practical.

BounceBit said on Aug. 21 that the incident ran from 21:02 UTC on Aug. 19 to 01:54 UTC on Aug. 20. The attacker moved 286,543,148 BB, worth about $3 million, from nine mainnet accounts across 14 transactions before block production stopped at 02:36 UTC. BounceBit will permanently retire its chain and reissue BB as a BEP-20 token on BNB Chain using a pre-attack snapshot, excluding the unauthorized transfers and automatically restoring eligible user balances.