Zilliqa says exchange partner's cold wallet hit in ZIL theft

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Zilliqa announced today, Monday, July 20, that an unspecified amount of ZIL tokens was stolen from the cold wallet of one of its exchange partners. 

Zilliqa wrote on its official X account that it had “been made aware of a security incident involving one of our exchange partners, in which ZIL was stolen from a cold wallet,” disclosing the incident. 

Exchanges have started to pause ZIL transfers in response to the project’s announcement.

What happened to Zilliqa?

According to Zilliqa, it is still investigating its Monday cold wallet theft. People store funds in cold wallets to keep them offline, which is supposed to safeguard them from online threats. 

In the Zilliqa case, where its cold wallet was compromised anyway, it means hackers still got access to the wallet. As for real implications, collateral damage is limited to the funds stored in that specific wallet, not a security threat affecting the whole network. 

Zilliqa declined to name the partner, the amount taken, or how the funds were moved, insisting that it is in the middle of investigations. 

The best answers users got for such queries were that “investigations are ongoing.” Alexander Zahnd, Zilliqa’s CEO, urged calm and promised a full report once one is ready.

At least two exchanges have confirmed to have paused ZIL operations in response to Zilliqa’s call “to temporarily pause ZIL deposits and withdrawals to prevent the stolen funds from being moved or sold through centralised platforms.”

South Korea’s Coinone said trading will continue as usual, but deposits and withdrawals will remain paused until the security incident it cited has been confirmed to be stabilized. 

KuCoin called its ZIL transfer pause an “essential maintenance” move. 

Why is ZIL trading at an all-time low?

ZIL token has dipped into the red since the incident report. As of this report, the token was trading between $0.002441 and $0.002610, an all-time low level. The token attained peak valuation way back in May 2021, when it reached $0.2563.

The Zilliqa theft is the latest security breach to hit a crypto project, continuing from a Q2 2026 that Cryptopolitan reported as a period of record security incidents, where losses exceeded $775 million across 83 incidents.

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