Building Through the Noise: Security Transparency and New Milestones in Brazil & the US
To our SatoshiPay investors, Pendulum community, and partners,
At SatoshiPay, transparency and security are the foundational pillars of our operations. We are writing to formally address the recent security incident involving the Hyperbridge protocol that occurred on April 13, 2026, and to clarify its impact on SatoshiPay’s liquidity positions, as well as the unwavering security of the Pendulum and Vortex networks.
No Impact to Pendulum or Vortex Systems Identified
First and foremost, we want to make it unequivocally clear: Pendulum and Vortex were not impacted by this exploit. There were no breaches, smart contract vulnerabilities, or security failures within our own architecture. Our systems operated exactly as designed, and user funds within the Pendulum and Vortex environments remain entirely secure.
The damage SatoshiPay absorbed was strictly external — an indirect hit caused by our participation as a liquidity provider in a compromised third-party protocol.
The Hyperbridge Incident: What Happened?
As detailed by leading blockchain security firm CertiK and later confirmed in Hyperbridge’s own “Recovery and Next Steps” post, the protocol suffered a critical exploit due to a vulnerability in its Merkle Mountain Range verification logic.
This flaw allowed a malicious actor to manipulate the bridging process, leading to the theft of assets across Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, and the Polkadot layer. Hyperbridge has since revised the total loss upwards to approximately $2.5 million.
The Financial Impact on SatoshiPay
To support the broader ecosystem and facilitate cross-chain interoperability, SatoshiPay maintained active liquidity positions on Ethereum and Arbitrum at the time of the incident. As a direct result of the exploit — specifically through the dilution of the DOT token on EVM networks and the direct theft of DOT on Hyperbridge’s Polkadot layer — SatoshiPay suffered a loss of 48.24 ETH and 90,527.10 DOT (an estimated value of $250,000 USD).
We take our fiduciary duties to our institutional investors and our community extremely seriously. Therefore, we have already submitted a formal Notice of Claim and Reservation of Rights to Polytope Labs (the team behind Hyperbridge) demanding a clear timeline for restitution.
While Hyperbridge has publicly outlined a long-term recovery strategy involving law enforcement, Binance compliance, and a fallback compensation plan involving BRIDGE tokens delayed until April 2027 we are actively engaging with their leadership and main ecosystem players to secure a more immediate and appropriate resolution for our stakeholders.
Ecosystem Accountability: The Question of Shared Responsibility
This incident highlights a critical conversation that needs to happen within the broader Polkadot ecosystem regarding shared responsibility.
SatoshiPay provided liquidity to Hyperbridge not in a vacuum, but because it was heavily promoted, funded, and supported by the network’s core entities as foundational infrastructure. Polytope Labs (the developers of Hyperbridge) received substantial backing from major ecosystem funds and venture capital firms closely tied to the Polkadot ecosystem.
Furthermore, Hyperbridge was heralded across official channels as a major milestone for connecting Polkadot to EVM ecosystems. Its liquidity campaigns were funded directly by core network treasuries, sitting alongside other major strategic initiatives built by the ecosystem’s leading development teams.
When the core entities of a network and major ecosystem VCs heavily endorse and fund a piece of infrastructure to encourage institutional liquidity, it implies a standard of security. Ecosystem builders like SatoshiPay step up to bootstrap these highly-endorsed initiatives in good faith. When critical vulnerabilities in these “milestone” projects lead to severe financial damage, establishing robust safety nets and finding collaborative solutions to support affected liquidity providers must be viewed as an ecosystem-wide imperative, not just the isolated burden of the exploited startup.
To this end, we are already in active discussions with core ecosystem actors to navigate the fallout of this event. Alongside our formal claim to Polytope Labs, our priority is to find constructive ways forward that ensure a more secure and resilient environment for the institutional liquidity providers who make network growth possible.
Heading Beyond the Incident: Strategic Momentum and Growth
While we remain focused on the full resolution of the Hyperbridge incident, it is important to highlight that SatoshiPay’s core development and expansion have not slowed. Our commitment to building a faster, more accessible financial future remains our primary driver, and we are pleased to share several key milestones achieved recently:
- Institutional Integration on Base: Pendulum’s FX DEX deployment on the Base network has officially been integrated by major industry aggregators, including 0x and KyberSwap. These integrations are already routing user traffic to the DEX. This validation from leading DeFi protocols allows us to upgrade the FX DEX technology, scale our liquidity and reach more users than ever before.
- Revolutionizing the Vortex UX: This FX DEX is more than just a liquidity hub; it is the engine for the next generation of our Vortex ramp. By leveraging this infrastructure, we are on track to reduce transaction times for the Brazil corridor to approx. 60 seconds for the entire journey from fiat to the target chain and token. This represents a massive leap in user experience and cross-border efficiency.
- Imminent US Expansion with AlfredPay: We are thrilled to announce that negotiations with AlfredPay have successfully concluded. The launch of our US services is imminent; we are currently live-testing in a restricted production environment to ensure a seamless and secure rollout for the American market with Mexico and Colombia up next.
These developments underscore the resilience of our ecosystem. By staying focused on our roadmap, we ensure that SatoshiPay remains at the forefront of the intersection between traditional finance and decentralized technology.
Moving Forward
We remain committed to the vision of a robust, interoperable Web3 ecosystem. This event reinforces our focus on stricter third-party risk assessment, defined exposure limits, and participation only in infrastructure that meets independently verifiable security standards.
We will continue to update our investors and the community as our formal claim with Polytope Labs progresses and as the broader Polkadot ecosystem responds to this event.
Thank you for your continued trust and support.
— The SatoshiPay Team
