The attack
An attacker using a compromised signature key linked to SingularityNET infrastructure drained about 8.7 million FET—reported at roughly $1.53 million to $1.56 million—from Fetch.ai’s Ethereum converter and minted about $452,000 of NTX through a NuNet deployer account. PeckShield said proceeds were swapped into 546.36 ETH, worth about $1.44 million at the time.
Why this matters
Cross-chain bridges are supposed to distribute trust. SlowMist said TokenConversionManagerV3 accepted a single externally owned account’s ECDSA signature for conversionIn(), while the reverse path had a limit check. Cryptography can be correct while governance is centralized. Multisignatures, rate limits, circuit breakers and delayed large transfers make one stolen key containable.
Numbers and consequences
More than $840 million was reportedly stolen from DeFi in the first five months of 2026; KelpDAO accounted for $292 million. This incident is smaller, but its cross-project blast radius is embarrassing for an alliance building advanced-AI infrastructure. NTX fell more than 70% to an all-time low on September 20. FET then rose 12.14% to $0.1899, showing that price can temporarily separate from security fundamentals.
Who wins, loses and next
The attacker gained liquid assets; users and alliance credibility lost. Exchanges may help freeze traceable proceeds. A proper repair requires published signer ownership, key rotation, limits and an independent postmortem. If the fix is only a new key, the architecture remains one compromise from repeating.
Sources: CryptoRank; Traders Union.