Maya Protocol published a staged restart plan on August 26, 2026, six days after a $1.7 million exploit halted MAYAChain and froze cross-chain swaps. The network has remained paused while core contributors patched the vulnerability and traced stolen funds. The new document, posted to the project's governance forum, sets out three phases: observation-only, limited swaps on a whitelist of pairs, and a full reopening once an independent audit signs off.
Last week's incident, covered in our August 20 report, exploited a routing flaw in the protocol's inbound observation layer. Attackers minted synthetic assets against under-collateralised deposits and drained liquidity pools before validators halted the chain. Most of the stolen funds remain in identifiable wallets, according to on-chain tracing shared with the community.
What the Plan Requires of Validators
Phase one would restart nodes in a read-only configuration so wallets can query balances without processing new swaps. Phase two would reopen a short list of high-liquidity pairs under a reduced outbound cap. Phase three, which the team has not dated, depends on an external audit of the patched observation code and on a validator vote to unpause remaining assets.
A compensation pool is still under discussion. Contributors have proposed covering a portion of user losses from protocol reserves and from a future token emission, a structure familiar from earlier THORChain-family incidents. Liquidity providers have argued that any restart without a clear restitution schedule would strand capital that has already been idle for a week.
What Users Should Do Now
Maya has advised users not to send funds to inbound addresses until the observation-only restart is confirmed on official channels. Cross-chain deposits sent during a halt can become unrecoverable if the inbound vault is not recognised on restart. Anyone who lost funds in the drain should preserve transaction hashes and, where a recovery claim may be needed, consider specialist tracing through firms such as Sarah Legal.
For the original incident write-up, see Maya Protocol's $1.7 million halt. For how tracing works after a cross-chain theft, see how blockchain forensics works.