A Cardano Bridge Just Got Drained — So Why Did ADA Rally Anyway?
Hackers stole millions from a Cardano-linked bridge, crashing the NIGHT token to record lows — but ADA holders saw prices climb regardless.
If you hold ADA, here’s the headline that matters: Cardano’s price climbed roughly 7% on July 21, even as a bridge connecting its ecosystem to BNB Chain got hacked. The exploit hit Wanchain’s bridge and gutted a newer, related token called NIGHT (Midnight), which crashed to record lows. It’s a reminder that not every hack in a coin’s ecosystem drags the main token down with it — but it’s also a warning about how fragile the “plumbing” of crypto still is.
What actually got hacked
Wanchain operates a bridge that lets tokens move between the Cardano and BNB Chain networks. According to CoinGape, an attacker drained about $13 million worth of NIGHT tokens from that bridge. BeInCrypto’s reporting, citing an on-chain analyst, put the number differently: roughly 515 million NIGHT tokens stolen, described as about 97% of everything the bridge was holding in that token. Wanchain has reportedly suspended the bridge while it investigates.
Bridges like this exist because different blockchains can’t natively “talk” to each other — a bridge locks tokens on one side and mints a matching version on the other. That locked pile of tokens is exactly what makes bridges such an attractive target for hackers, and this is far from the first bridge exploit crypto has seen this year.
NIGHT gets hit hard, ADA barely notices
The damage to NIGHT was severe. CoinMarketCap data cited by CoinGape showed the token falling from around $0.026 to $0.019, a drop of about 25%, in the hours after the exploit was reported. BeInCrypto went further, reporting that NIGHT actually slid all the way to a fresh all-time low of $0.01524 as the news spread. The exact figures differ slightly between reports, but the direction is unmistakable: NIGHT holders took a serious hit.
ADA, meanwhile, was trading up around 7.1% on the day, near $0.175, according to CoinGape. That’s the part everyday holders should sit with: even though the hack happened on infrastructure tied to the Cardano ecosystem, it didn’t touch Cardano’s own blockchain or its native ADA token. NIGHT is a separate, related project — not ADA itself — so its bridge getting drained didn’t directly threaten anyone simply holding Cardano.
Not the first scare this summer
This wasn’t an isolated incident for projects connected to Cardano. CoinGape noted that just a month earlier, on June 24, 2026, a protocol called SecondFi lost $2.4 million in a separate exploit. Two hacks tied to the same broader ecosystem within roughly four weeks is the kind of pattern that should give cautious investors pause, even if the core Cardano network itself keeps functioning normally.
What this means for your wallet
The practical lesson here is simple: holding a major coin like ADA doesn’t automatically expose you to every hack that happens near it. But if you hold smaller, newer tokens that rely on bridges — like NIGHT did — your risk is higher, because bridges concentrate large amounts of funds in one place and have repeatedly proven easy to exploit. Before moving assets across chains, it’s worth checking whether the bridge you’re using has been audited recently, and never assuming “connected to a big name like Cardano” means “safe.”
Read more: Allbridge Just Lost $1M+ in a Hack — What It Means If You Use Cross-Chain Bridges
