Initia Chain halts operations following hack; INIT surges 80% in 24 hours to top gainers list

According to HTX market data, INIT surged 80% over the past 24 hours on November 10, topping the gainers’ chart and breaking above $0.23 to trade at $0.234. Yet market sentiment runs counter to this price action—Initia is currently engulfed in FUD. An official announcement states that the Initia L1 chain was proactively paused at 14:18 local time (06:18 UTC) following coordination with validators—a precautionary security measure. The pause follows detection of anomalous activity in a custodial account on Initia L1: this account held assets bridged across multiple rollups, but recently suffered unauthorized transfers. Preliminary investigation confirms attackers compromised infrastructure keys for one of the rollups and forged IBC transfer instructions to execute the breach. Prior to the network pause, approximately $605,000 worth of USDC was withdrawn from Initia via the Noble bridge, alongside roughly $10,000 in other tokens. Meanwhile, the vast majority of remaining assets in the custodial account remain stranded on the now-halted Initia L1 chain.