Preventive Pause and Freeze Timeline
Threshold Network issued a pause notice on 10月30日, and announced a preventive pause on tBTC minting and redemption on 10月31日 for security maintenance. Risk provider LlamaRisk promptly recommended freezing tBTC reserves in the Aave V3 Ethereum main market, executed by the Aave guardian multisig at UTC 10時01分, equivalent to 10月31日下午6時01分 Taiwan time. According to The Defiant, tBTC deposits in the market total approximately 1.365億美元, with approximately 1.36億美元 in reserves affected.
Freeze Scope and Impact on Existing Positions
After the freeze, tBTC no longer accepts new deposits, nor does it provide borrowing capacity for users, but users can still repay debt and withdraw assets, liquidation continues to operate normally, and borrowings collateralized by other assets are unaffected. As the tBTC liquidation threshold remains unchanged, the health factors of existing positions will not change as a result, and the freeze itself will not push any position directly into liquidation. If market price fluctuations cause health factors to decline, liquidations will still proceed normally. tBTC is listed on Aave V3 across three markets: the Ethereum main market, Base and Arbitrum, of which Base and Arbitrum reserves were previously frozen under the asset offboarding process, leaving the Ethereum main market as the only market where new borrowing against tBTC was still possible.
Official Statements and Liquidity Risks
Threshold states that tBTC remains fully backed by Bitcoin, with no loss of funds at present, and no unauthorized minting detected, with Bitcoin in the bridge wallets still exceeding tBTC in circulation, by about 135枚 based on data calculations. The pause covers new Bitcoin deposits, tBTC minting and redemption requests, while tBTC already in circulation can still be held, transferred and used. Threshold has not disclosed details of the underlying security issue, saying only that cross-chain bridge functions will resume once remediation measures are fully in place, promising the next update within 24小時, while reminding users not to transfer Bitcoin to previously generated deposit addresses, nor to resubmit incomplete transactions.
Other DeFi protocols have also taken defensive measures. The Morpho USDC Core vault managed by risk manager Gauntlet has withdrawn approximately 6.5萬USDC in available liquidity, and still has approximately 64萬USDC supplied in markets collateralized by tBTC. Gauntlet warns that the redemption pause may affect tBTC liquidity and exit channels during liquidations. tBTC is a cross-chain token that allows Bitcoin holders to participate in lending transactions on networks such as Ethereum, and once two-way conversion is paused, prices may deviate from Bitcoin if secondary market liquidity is insufficient. LlamaRisk says it will continue to monitor Threshold updates, on-chain positions and secondary market liquidity, and will propose parameter restoration once operations return to normal.