A Cryptocurrency Network Suddenly Stopped Working: Funds Could Be Stolen by Hackers at Any Moment

It has been reported that the fate of approximately $500,000 worth of investor funds was put at risk after the Layer-2 network Re.al suddenly stopped working.

Researcher Luca Donno, who stated that blockchain production stopped on Friday, announced that the network became dysfunctional due to the inactivity of the platform’s data availability committee (DAC).

Donno, who works on the L2Beat research platform, drew attention to a potential security vulnerability in his post on X, saying, “With the current state of the network, a malicious person can steal all the funds by making changes to the system, and there is no way to prevent this.”

The Data Availability Committee (DAC) is a structure that whitelists certain addresses and is responsible for sharing off-chain data in the Re.al project. However, when this structure is not working, the network loses its vitality and transactions come to a halt.

Donno’s warning isn’t just a problem specific to Re.al; it also highlights a larger vulnerability facing the decentralized finance (DeFi) world. According to DefiLlama data, the total amount of funds stolen in crypto attacks in 2025 exceeded $2 billion, a 50% increase compared to the entire year of 2024.

Re.al was developed by the Tangible team behind the USDR stablecoin project, which collapsed in 2023 due to its inability to manage its treasury. USDR lost 50% of its dollar peg, and investors suffered serious losses. After this failure, the team turned to the Re.al project, aiming to tokenize physical assets.

Launched in 2024, Re.al, a platform that tokenizes real estate assets, quickly raised up to $18 million in investment. However, the total asset value tied to the project has now fallen below $500,000.

Donno noted that users can attempt to withdraw funds via the Ethereum network, but this process will take 12 days. During this time, a malicious actor could steal existing funds by making a malicious update to the system, as the off-chain data that is required to be provided by the DAC is missing from the network, leaving transactions vulnerable.

*This is not investment advice.

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