Polyhedra co-founder says more buybacks coming after ZKJ token crashed due to ‘attack’

Polyhedra Network co-founder Tiancheng Xie said Monday that his company would continue to buy back ZKJ tokens after much of their value was wiped away following an allegedly targeted attack.

“We will buyback more. Now we need to figure out current situation and we need to prevent future financial attack,” Xie said in a post to X.

On Sunday, the price of ZKJ dropped from roughly $2 to 30 cents in a matter of hours. On Monday, Polyhedra posted an initial report examining the potential causes of the price crash.

“Key immediate factors include significant token deposits stemming from a coordinated onchain liquidity attack, substantial deposits by Wintermute into centralized exchanges, and cascading liquidations on these exchanges (CEXs),” Polyhedra said.

Xie appeared to be feeling the heat earlier Monday. “I know everyone’s criticizing us right now, but we’ve faced this before. We turned criticism into praise last time, and we can do it again, even better than before,” the Polyhedra executive posted. “Our tech is rock solid. We won’t back down from shady financial attacks.”

ZKJ, which began trading last March, quickly notched an all-time high around $3.40 before cratering to a low near $1.10, where it mostly remained range-bound before beginning a slow climb upwards in November, according to The Block’s data page.

Polyhedra is the developer behind the zero-knowledge interoperability protocol zkBridge, which is, according to the company, “significantly faster” than existing proofs, both in proof generation and proof verification.

Sunday’s crash represents a precipitous decline for a project that in March 2024 attained a $1 billion valuation following a $20 million strategic funding round. Polychain Capital led the round, with Animoca Brands and Hashkey Capital also participating.