In a disconcerting turn of events, the Bittensor blockchain faced an abrupt cessation early Wednesday due to a significant breach targeting multiple user wallets, culminating in the depletion of one wallet to the tune of $8 million in TAO tokens.

The TAO token’s value nosedived by approximately 15% in the wake of this attack. However, a minor rebound was observed as Bittensor’s core team assured stakeholders of implementing corrective measures to prevent further incidents.

“We are currently delving into the incident and, as a precautionary measure, have fully suspended on-chain transactions until we obtain more clarity regarding the attack’s nature,” stated a Bittensor core team member on the project’s Discord platform.

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Subsequently, co-founder Ala Shaabana confirmed on X that the blockchain had been shifted to “safe mode,” a state where blocks continue to be produced but transaction processing is halted. Monitoring tools for the Bittensor network indicated that the most recent transactions and blocks were recorded around 23:00 UTC on Tuesday.

In parallel, independent security expert @ZachXBT revealed on his Telegram channel that a single user had lost 32,000 TAO, valued at $8 million during the incident, suspecting a compromise of the private key which facilitated the breach. A private key, consisting of a sequence of letters and numbers, functions as a cryptographic password for safeguarding and managing tokens within a wallet.

Investigations into the attack were still underway as of Wednesday morning.

Bittensor, renowned for linking machine learning models operated by individuals globally, stands as a prominent AI-centric cryptocurrency project with a market capitalization of $1.6 billion.