Upbit issued a trading caution and Bithumb suspended SAND deposits and withdrawals on August 22, 2026, after an attacker gained arbitrary minting rights on The Sandbox's Base contract and created roughly 14.9 billion SAND. The actual theft was far smaller: about 14.75 million SAND drained from the Ethereum adapter, netting the attacker around 80 ETH.
South Korea's two largest exchanges moved first. On August 22, 2026, Upbit issued a trading caution, and Bithumb suspended SAND deposits and withdrawals after on-chain alerts flagged a suspected exploit on The Sandbox's Base network deployment.
Blockchain security firm PeckShield confirmed the scale of the breach minutes later. According to data made public, approximately 14.9 billion SAND tokens were minted across two addresses, dwarfing the token's entire 3-billion supply on Ethereum mainnet.
How the exploit unfolded
The first alerts showed more than 500 million SAND minted on Base, and the number kept climbing. An attacker had gained arbitrary token-minting permissions on the SAND contract deployed on Base, a cross-chain LayerZero Omnichain Fungible Token configuration. On Ethereum, the same contract address functions as an OFT Adapter holding the real, locked SAND that backs cross-chain deployments.
Forensics account BlockWatchdog later detailed the breakdown: the attacker drained approximately 14.75 million SAND from the Ethereum adapter in under a minute. Realized proceeds from token sales came to roughly 80 ETH, or about $675,000.
Headline mint versus actual loss
The gap between the headline figure and the actual loss reflects the structure of the attack: minting tokens on Base does not create new Ethereum-native SAND. Still, the volume of unbacked tokens flooding Base created immediate market risk.
The Sandbox's multisig subsequently zeroed the LayerZero peers for Ethereum and BSC, isolating Base. Ethereum mainnet supply remained capped at 3 billion SAND and was not inflated. The Sandbox, an Animoca Brands subsidiary that raised $93 million in a 2021 funding round, has not yet issued a public statement on the root cause.
What traders should watch next
Investors face two separate risks. First, secondary-market pressure: even unbacked minted tokens can reach exchanges and depress price. Second, dilution uncertainty persists until The Sandbox confirms whether a burn or recovery plan is in place.
Upbit's caution and Bithumb's suspension remain active, and The Sandbox's official account had not issued a statement at the time of writing.
Source: CoinGape
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