pNetwork 2021 pBTC-on-BSC exploit
A bug in pNetwork's Rust event-log extraction caused malicious peg-out requests to be processed on the pBTC-on-BSC bridge. The attacker stole 277 BTC collateral; other pTokens bridges were stopped and were not successfully drained.
Incident facts
- Incident title
- pNetwork 2021 pBTC-on-BSC exploit
- Bridge
- pNetwork
- Incident date
- 2021-09-19
- Incident type
- Exploit
- Major incident
- Yes
- Affected chains
- Bitcoin, BNB Chain
- Affected assets
- BTC
- Attack category
- Event Log Parsing Bug
- Reported loss
- 277 BTC
- Amount confidence
- High
- Loss amount basis
- Official PNetwork Postmortem
- Recovery
- None Confirmed
- Reimbursement
- Announced
- Restart
- Partial Reopen
- Current outcome
- Bridge Family Later Deprecated
- Postmortem
- Full
- Resolution
- Unresolved
- Last reviewed
- 2026-06-15
- Last verified
- 2026-06-15
Amount and valuation
pNetwork's official postmortem reported that 277 BTC was stolen from collateral backing pBTC-on-BSC.
The canonical amount is retained in BTC rather than converted using a later fiat price.
277 BTC stolen from pBTC-on-BSC collateral
Canonical asset-denominated incident amount.
Why this remains unresolved
- The postmortem announced that compensation proposals would be developed, but final recovery and compensation completion are not established in this batch.
Timeline events
pBTC-on-BSC exploited and pNetwork bridges paused2021-09-19
The team stopped all bridges after detecting the pBTC-on-BSC exploit and reported 277 BTC stolen from collateral.
Other pTokens bridges were not successfully drained.
Fix deployed and unaffected bridges gradually reactivated2021-09-19
pNetwork implemented a fix and gradually reactivated unaffected bridges after additional review and security checks.
This does not establish restoration of the exploited pBTC-on-BSC bridge itself.
pNetwork announced a community compensation process2021-09-21
The postmortem said DAO proposals would be used to develop compensation for current pBTC-on-BSC holders.
Final completion is not established.
Evidence records
- pNetwork Post Mortem: pBTC-on-BSC ExploitpNetwork · Tier 1 · High reliability · primary · 2021-09-21Claim scope: Incident Case
Primary technical and aftermath account for the 277 BTC exploit.
- pNetwork pBTC-on-BSC exploit analysisRekt · Tier 2 · Medium reliability · secondary · 2021-09-20Claim scope: Incident Case
Independent contemporaneous technical context.
- pNetwork Post Mortem: pBTC-on-BSC ExploitpNetwork · Tier 1 · High reliability · primary · 2021-09-21Claim scope: Restart
Event-scoped duplicate of bir_src_000086: pNetwork's official postmortem supports the deployed fix and gradual reactivation of unaffected bridges.
- pNetwork Post Mortem: pBTC-on-BSC ExploitpNetwork · Tier 1 · High reliability · primary · 2021-09-21Claim scope: Reimbursement
Event-scoped duplicate of bir_src_000086: pNetwork's official postmortem supports the DAO-led compensation process for pBTC-on-BSC holders.
Source tiers describe evidence authority, not certainty for every claim. Tier 1 is the strongest source class; Tier 2 and Tier 3 provide progressively more secondary or supporting context. Source notes define what each record actually supports.
Known unknowns
- Final compensation amount, recipients, and completion date remain unverified.
- The final disposition of the stolen BTC is not established here.
Help maintain incident aftermath records
Support recovery, reimbursement, restart, migration, shutdown, evidence, and correction checks.
Report a correction
Report missing evidence, incorrect dates, outcome changes, recovery details, reimbursement status, or broken links. GitHub Issues are preferred for structured review; the Google Form is available if you do not use GitHub.