XRP fell below $1 for the first time since January 2024 on August 11, a milestone triggered by the exploitation of the Coreum cross-chain bridge connecting to the XRP Ledger. The price dipped to around $0.99 before recovering slightly to $1.01, marking the token’s lowest level in more than two and a half years as the broader crypto market digested the security breach.
The price collapse followed a critical hack on August 9, when an attacker drained nearly 200,000 XRP from the Coreum bridge in just 97 minutes. According to blockchain analytics, the bridge’s balance plummeted from approximately 200,410 XRP to 493.5 XRP as the attacker executed 94 fraudulent transactions across the span of an hour and a half.
XRP has shed roughly 72% from its all-time high of $3.65 earlier in the year, reflecting broader crypto market headwinds and recent selling pressure. Before the August 9 exploit, XRP news had already been tracking the token’s struggle to hold above the $1 support level, with analysts noting that transaction volume on the XRP Ledger had declined 44% in the four days leading up to the hack—from 2.81 million transactions on August 5 to 1.57 million on August 9.
How the Bridge Vulnerability Worked
The Coreum bridge, which launched in March 2024 to connect XRP holders to decentralized finance opportunities across the Cosmos ecosystem, relied on a multisig relayer system where a group of relayer nodes collectively authorize transactions. The attacker exploited a deposit verification flaw in the bridge’s relayer logic, submitting fabricated deposit actions that the system accepted as legitimate.
Rather than triggering a breach of the XRP Ledger itself or stealing private keys, the exploit targeted the bridge’s verification process. The attacker’s fake deposits fooled the consensus mechanism into authorizing real XRP withdrawals from the bridge’s wallet on the other side. On-chain analysis showed that the authorization required 17 of 28 relayer keys to sign off on each transaction, yet the exploit successfully passed nearly a hundred illegitimate payments in rapid succession.
The root cause was relayer-based verification rather than on-chain cryptographic proofs—a design choice that trades security for simplicity. When the verification logic contained a bug, the entire security model collapsed. Critically, the XRP Ledger itself remained secure and no private keys were compromised, meaning this was a third-party infrastructure failure rather than a protocol-level vulnerability.
As of August 12, the Coreum bridge remained suspended. The Coreum Development Foundation had not released an official incident report, leaving the community to piece together what happened through on-chain data and independent security analysis. The incident adds to a pattern of cross-chain bridge exploits in 2026: according to blockchain security tracking, cross-chain bridges lost $340.7 million across fourteen exploits in the year so far, underscoring the structural risks in bridging infrastructure.
Sources
- CryptoBriefing — detailed breakdown of the Coreum bridge exploit, relayer logic flaw, and impact on XRP price
- Yahoo Finance — XRP price drop below $1 and confirmation of August 9 bridge hack
- CoinMarketCap — live XRP price confirmation at $1.01 USD
- KuCoin — XRP drops below $1 for first time in nearly two years following Coreum bridge hack
- Crypto Ticker — XRP transaction volume decline on XRP Ledger in days leading up to exploit
- Binance — Coreum bridge attack and XRP price movement confirmation
