NIGHT Drops 35% as 515M-Token Wanchain Bridge Drain Hits DEXs in Eight Minutes
A Wanchain bridge contract released 515.2M NIGHT in four transfers, triggering a 50% flash crash and a $125.96M volume spike.
A Wanchain bridge contract holding funds since December 2025 released 515.2 million NIGHT tokens in four transfers over an eight-minute window on July 20, 2026, setting off a sell-off that briefly cut the Midnight ecosystem token’s price in half. NIGHT is now down 35.12% over 24 hours to $0.0174, after swinging between an intraday high of $0.02689 and a low of $0.01582, according to on-chain data cited by The Crypto Basic. Trading volume jumped 798% to $125.96 million as the market absorbed the flow.
Four transfers, one wallet, eight minutes
Cardano on-chain investigator UTxOMaestro traced the outflow to four separate transfers — 203.0 million, 129.6 million, 120.4 million and 62.1 million NIGHT — all landing in the same wallet between 14:46 and 14:55 UTC on July 20. The bridge contract also held Mynth, XER and WMT tokens at the time, but only NIGHT was withdrawn, a detail that points to a deliberate, asset-specific extraction rather than a broad drain.
The analysis identified two wallets, labeled W1 and W2, that appear to be controlled by the same entity. W1 first sent 1,000 ADA to W2 before moving 200.06 million NIGHT to it; W2 later returned 100.31 million NIGHT along with ADA and USDCx, a round-trip pattern consistent with common control rather than an arm’s-length counterparty.
300 million NIGHT hit the market, more sits in reserve
W1 moved quickly to liquidate, selling an estimated 300 million NIGHT across decentralized exchanges and driving the initial leg of the crash, roughly a 50% drop from intraday highs. Confirmed swaps included 217.7 million NIGHT for approximately 24.02 million ADA and 87.88 million NIGHT for about 1.44 million USDCx.
Not all of the tokens were dumped outright. W2 deposited roughly 68.27 million NIGHT into the Liqwid lending protocol as collateral, borrowed about 4.364 million ADA against that position, and routed the borrowed ADA back to W1 — extracting liquidity without immediately adding to sell pressure on NIGHT itself. Investigators note that a large share of the transferred supply, including the 200 million NIGHT sent to W2, remains largely unsold, leaving an overhang that could weigh on price if it hits the market.
Midnight Foundation isolates the fault to third-party bridge infrastructure
The Midnight Foundation issued a statement distancing the network’s core infrastructure from the incident, saying the blockchain itself was not compromised. The organization attributed the event to the Wanchain Cardano-BNB bridge specifically, describing it as third-party cross-chain infrastructure separate from Midnight’s protocol, validator network and consensus layer, all of which it says continue operating normally.
For traders, the distinction matters: a bridge-level drain is a liquidity and custody event, not necessarily a protocol-level security failure, but the market impact is identical either way when hundreds of millions of tokens hit thin DEX pools within minutes. NIGHT has recovered modestly from its lows, yet the unresolved position size held by W1 and W2 keeps downside risk live until those wallets either sell, hold, or are otherwise accounted for on-chain.
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