SAND Bridge Exploit: The Sandbox Halts Base & BNB Chain

The Sandbox SAND bridge exploit prompted the project to suspend SAND bridging on Base and BNB Smart Chain after an attacker minted unbacked SAND via its cross-chain infrastructure. The team says the underlying SAND locked on Ethereum remains secure and continues to back legitimate bridged tokens; Ethereum and Polygon were not affected, and no user wallets were compromised. SAND bridging is paused in both directions (to and from Base/BNB), preventing redeems through the bridge and stopping movement toward Ethereum collateral. The project also warned users not to buy, sell, or trade SAND on Base and BNB Smart Chain because liquidity there is compromised. It estimates the real impact is under 0.01% of SAND total supply, while security firms reported much larger nominal figures: Blockaid estimated about $49B face-value SAND minted across 400+ transactions, and PeckShield flagged ~14.9B SAND minted to two addresses. Following the SAND bridge exploit, major South Korean exchanges moved to protect users. Bithumb suspended SAND deposits and withdrawals at 11:11 KST, with Upbit following one minute later, citing security concerns under South Korea’s Virtual Asset User Protection Act. Upbit initially paused Ethereum-based SAND transfers, but The Sandbox later said the Ethereum token was never exposed to the vulnerability. Traders should watch for SAND liquidity fragmentation between Ethereum/Polygon (operating normally) and Base/BNB (isolated) until the bridge is restored. The Sandbox said it will publish a full post-mortem after investigation.