Zilliqa has asked cryptocurrency exchanges to temporarily suspend ZIL deposits and withdrawals after an exchange partner suffered a suspected cold wallet compromise.
Summary
- Zilliqa asked exchanges to halt ZIL transfers after a partner’s cold wallet was reportedly compromised.
- The network has not disclosed the stolen amount, affected exchange, or suspected cause of theft.
- ZIL fell about 9% as transfer suspensions and unanswered questions weighed on short-term market sentiment.
The layer-1 blockchain project said ZIL had been stolen from the affected wallet and that it had started investigating the incident with the unnamed partner. Zilliqa has not disclosed how many tokens were taken, their value or how the attacker gained access to the wallet.
“We understand the community will have questions. We will share further updates as soon as we have verified information,” Zilliqa said.
The project also asked users to rely on its official channels while investigators establish what happened.
The announcement points to a compromise involving an exchange partner rather than a confirmed breach of the Zilliqa blockchain itself. However, the team has not yet released a technical review or identified the affected company, leaving the exact attack method unknown.
Exchanges pause ZIL deposits and withdrawals
Zilliqa said it contacted exchanges and requested temporary restrictions on ZIL transfers as a precaution. The measure limits the ability to deposit or withdraw the token through participating trading platforms while the investigation continues.
Bitget separately announced that it would suspend deposits and withdrawals on the Zilliqa network from July 20 at 18:15 UTC+8. The exchange cited “wallet maintenance” and said it would announce a reopening time later. Bitget did not publicly link its maintenance notice to the theft in the announcement.
The transfer restrictions do not stop the Zilliqa blockchain from processing transactions between onchain addresses. Instead, participating exchanges can prevent users from moving ZIL into or out of their platforms until they complete their own checks or receive further information.
Meanwhile, ZIL faced fresh selling pressure following the security announcement. CoinGecko data showed the token trading near $0.00254 at the time of writing, down about 9% over 24 hours. Market prices can change quickly while details about the incident remain limited.
Cold wallet compromise raises questions over the theft
Cold wallets keep private keys away from constantly internet-connected systems and are widely used by exchanges to store larger crypto balances. However, cold storage does not remove every security risk. Problems involving signing devices, private-key access or internal operational controls can still expose assets.
A major example came in February 2025, when Bybit lost about $1.4 billion after attackers compromised a cold wallet transaction process. As crypto.news previously reported, the incident showed that attackers can target the systems and people involved in authorizing transactions even when assets sit in offline storage.
More recent security cases have also shifted attention toward wallet access and key management. Crypto.news reported in May that a roughly $520,000 incident connected to Polymarket activity was linked to a compromised private key used for an internal operations wallet rather than the platform’s core contracts.
Zilliqa has not said whether the latest theft involved a stolen private key, compromised signing system or another type of security failure. It has also not said whether the stolen ZIL has moved to other wallets or reached centralized exchanges.
Until investigators release wallet addresses or transaction records, the amount stolen and the movement of the funds cannot be independently assessed from Zilliqa’s public statement alone.
Zilliqa waits for verified findings before releasing details
The latest incident comes after Zilliqa faced several technical problems in previous years, although those events involved network operations rather than a disclosed exchange wallet theft.
As previously reported by crypto.news, Zilliqa announced a permanent fix in September 2024 after a bug interrupted block production. The network had also dealt with other disruptions involving block generation and node synchronization during that period.
Those earlier technical problems have not been publicly connected to the current exchange partner incident. Zilliqa’s latest statement specifically describes the event as the theft of ZIL from a cold wallet controlled by a partner.
The project launched its mainnet in 2019 and became known for using sharding to divide transaction processing across groups of nodes. ZIL serves as the network’s native asset and is used for transaction fees and smart contract activity.
For now, the main unanswered questions concern the identity of the affected exchange, the amount of ZIL stolen and the method used to compromise the wallet. Zilliqa has not provided a timeline for completing its investigation or said when exchanges should restore normal transfers.
