Saga pauses SagaEVM after $7M exploit as TVL and token plunge

Beincrypto reports that Layer-1 blockchain Saga paused its SagaEVM chain after a smart contract exploit on January 21, 2026 that resulted in nearly $7 million in losses and prompted mass withdrawals. According to the report, attackers exploited a vulnerability in the protocol’s cross-chain messaging to mint Saga Dollar tokens, bridge them to Ethereum and convert them to ETH via decentralized exchanges such as 1inch, CowSwap, UniV4 and KyberSwap; the extracted funds were traced to address 0x2044697623afa31459642708c83f04ecef8c6ecb and Saga is coordinating with exchanges and bridges to blacklist it.

Saga paused the chain at block height 6,593,800 while engineers investigate and implement safeguards, while stressing that the Saga mainnet, consensus mechanisms and validator security remain intact and signer keys were not compromised. The immediate fallout saw Saga Dollar briefly depeg to $0.75 and total value locked drop over 55% to $16.07 million; CoinGecko data cited in the report shows the token trading around $0.7559, down about 24%.

The incident adds to broader Cosmos ecosystem strain, where Mars Protocol — after a prior exploit leaving roughly $960,000 in bad debt in its USDC market — is planning a controlled wind-down by March 23, 2026 with the Neutron Foundation coordinating remediation and Amber protocol possibly continuing under new management.

Key Topics

Crypto, Saga, Sagaevm, Saga Dollar, Cosmos, Mars Protocol