tBTC bridge restarts with new deposits shut and Aave's reserve frozen

Threshold Network said late on Nov. 8 that its tBTC bridge had resumed onchain as node operators reconnect on patched systems, nine days after it paused minting and redemptions. The app still does not accept new deposits, mints or redemptions, and Aave's tBTC reserve on Ethereum remains frozen.

The pause began on Oct. 30. Threshold later tied it to a Linux kernel flaw, CVE-2026-98432, that can allow remote code execution on unpatched servers, and said every operator had either patched or taken its node offline. It found no evidence that the flaw was used against any tBTC node, as Cointelegraph also reported. A separate incident at one operator drained about 0.5 ETH from the account its node uses for fees, which Threshold called unrelated to the kernel bug.

What works on the tBTC bridge now

Requests made before the pause are being processed as operators come back, according to Threshold. A tBTC wallet needs a majority of independent operators to sign any Bitcoin transaction, so throughput depends on how many nodes are online. The bridge UI will be switched back on once enough of them can handle deposits, mints and redemptions promptly.

Until then, Threshold asks users not to send BTC to deposit addresses generated earlier and not to resubmit pending transactions. After the UI returns, a deposit should start from a fresh address. Holding and transferring tBTC on Ethereum and layer 2 networks were never paused, Threshold says.

Threshold says the token stayed fully backed throughout, with about 4,320 BTC in bridge wallets against roughly 4,185 tBTC in circulation. That is the project's own figure, which it says anyone can check in its onchain explorer, and it is not an independent audit. On CoinGecko at 08:04 UTC on Nov. 9, tBTC traded at $73,642 against $73,722 for bitcoin.

Why Aave's tBTC reserve stays frozen

Aave's guardian multisig froze tBTC on its V3 Ethereum Core market at 10:01 UTC on Oct. 31, on a recommendation from risk manager LlamaRisk posted in the Aave governance forum. The freeze blocks new tBTC deposits and stops tBTC from adding borrowing power. Repayments, withdrawals and liquidations keep working, and existing health factors did not change. LlamaRisk said it would propose restorative measures only once it has assurance that tBTC operations are back to normal.

Aave's data contract on Ethereum still showed the reserve as frozen at 08:04 UTC on Nov. 9, holding about 1,597 tBTC, or roughly $118 million at the CoinGecko price. A forum contributor counted 1,749.5 tBTC on Nov. 2, so about 150 tBTC has left the reserve since then. Other bitcoin wrappers have faced backing questions too: Liquid's federation recently said it had restored full backing for LBTC nearly two months after a software flaw emptied most of its reserve.

Secondary liquidity is the exit while redemptions stay shut, and thin liquidity has been costly on Aave's interface before: in March a single swap lost nearly $50 million to slippage. A forum contributor who quoted tBTC into WBTC through ParaSwap on Nov. 3 found that 250 tBTC returned 228 WBTC, 8.8% less. No trade size returned more than about 365 WBTC, under a quarter of the tBTC still sitting in Aave.