An attacker withdrew approximately 97 million CORE from b14g’s staking contracts on October 31, prompting the project to pause affected contracts. As of November 1, 2026, Coin Bureau reported that CORE had fallen 12% to an all-time low. The incident affected a staking application built on Core. Core DAO said the underlying network remained secure.
The 97 million CORE withdrawal was not a $97 million loss. Bitquery valued it at approximately $1.47 million using the token’s price immediately before the attack.
A Withdrawal Request Emptied 91 Staking Orders
Bitquery’s transaction investigation identified a single transaction at 09:29:51 UTC on October 31 that withdrew 97.05 million CORE from 91 b14g staking orders.
The attacker submitted 99 requests, each asking to withdraw zero CORE. According to Bitquery, Core’s staking code interprets a zero amount as a request to withdraw the entire stake. b14g passed those requests through, and the funds went to a wallet that had contributed nothing to the affected orders. The release of users’ full positions through those requests points to a failure in the application’s withdrawal handling.
Core DAO said consensus, validators and staking contracts operated normally throughout the incident. It also said CORE staked directly with validators or through other protocols was unaffected.
An application can mishandle access to staked funds even as the underlying blockchain processes transactions according to its rules. Continued network operation does not protect deposits held through a vulnerable application.
Contract Pauses and Exchange Freezes Address Different Risks
According to The Crypto Times’ account of the project’s security update, b14g paused affected contracts after discovering the unauthorized withdrawal. It began working with Core, security partners and exchanges to trace the tokens and coordinate recovery.
At the time of that update, b14g said approximately 68 million CORE remained on the Core network. Exchange partners had frozen about 9 million CORE linked to the attacker. Neither figure represented funds returned to depositors, so adding them together would overstate recovery.
A contract pause restricts activity through the affected application. An exchange freeze addresses funds that have reached a cooperating exchange. Neither measure reverses the original withdrawal by itself.
b14g said Bitcoin staked through its service remained time-locked on Bitcoin and was unaffected. Depositors’ immediate exposure therefore depends on which asset they staked and the route they used; holding CORE alone does not establish exposure to the affected contracts.
The project promised a detailed post-mortem covering the technical cause, impact and next steps for affected users.
Overview
b14g reported an unauthorized withdrawal of approximately 97 million CORE and paused affected contracts. Exchange partners froze about 9 million CORE. Coin Bureau reported a 12% token decline in its November 1 update, and Core DAO said the network and staking outside b14g remained unaffected.
