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.
