2 months ago
9625
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is taking a decisive step following the revelation of a major security breach affecting the Flow (FLOW) blockchain.
Binance announced that it will delist some Flow trading pairs and add FLOW and other volatile tokens to its “Watchlist.” This label was introduced to notify users about elevated risk profiles.
According to a Friday announcement, Binance stated that it would eliminate nine spot trading pairs from the exchange, effective Saturday, including one for FLOW/BTC. In a separate notice, the company included FLOW and three other tokens on its monitoring tag list.
Flow hack exposes vulnerabilities and sparks market turmoil
On December 27, 2025, the Flow network was hacked by a hacker who exploited a weakness to mint fraudulent FLOW tokens, sparking a rapid sell‑off and liquidity crisis on exchanges. The hack is said to have shaved about 40% off Flow’s market price in the immediate days after the attack.
The label is applied to tokens that exhibit “notably higher volatility and risks compared to other listed tokens,” the exchange stated, noting that the monitoring flag indicates the risk of tokens no longer meeting listing requirements.
Binance stated that the decisive moves followed “recent reviews” of the tokens, but did not explicitly mention the Flow exploit on Saturday. Reporters reached out to the exchange for comment on the exploit, but had not received a response at the time of publication.
In a preliminary post-mortem report on the exploit, Flow said it was “concerned by one exchange’s handling of this incident,” referring to an “AML/KYC failure” that allowed the hackers to deposit the stolen FLOW tokens, convert some to Bitcoin, and withdraw the funds. Some users speculated that, based on Flow’s description, the unnamed exchange could have been Binance.
Restoration underway as exchanges and developers respond
As of Friday, the Flow Foundation noted that it was working on fully restoring the blockchain ecosystem as part of a plan to address the $3.9 million exploit. According to the platform, the only steps remaining in the plan were to address user account restoration and remediate fraudulent tokens.
“What was initially projected as a sequential, multi-day process has been executed in parallel, restoring both Cadence and EVM [Ethereum Virtual Machine] functionality while maintaining surgical precision in removing fraudulent assets and preserving legitimate transaction history,” said Flow
The delisting news follows the scrapping of a proposal from earlier this week that included a rollback of the blockchain, which it halted amid criticism from many users. According to the platform, it expected to release a comprehensive post-mortem report on the hack “within 48 hours” with “complete ecosystem restoration expected this week.”
In an official update, Binance stated that it had traced and frozen the hacker’s remaining funds held on its platform to protect users, while urging the Flow project team to provide a detailed post-mortem of the exploit. Binance also emphasized that if the Flow team implements any recovery mechanism, exchange wallets should be excluded from such rollbacks to prevent complicating user balances.
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