A major exploit on the Hyperbridge protocol sent shockwaves through the Polkadot ecosystem, causing a sharp drop in the price of DOT. The incident occurred when a hacker minted 1 billion DOT tokens on Ethereum, but limited liquidity restricted the exit, resulting in only approximately $237,000 being sold. Total losses from the event were later estimated at around $2.5 million.
The Polkadot development team responded quickly, emphasizing recovery efforts and crucially confirming that the main Polkadot chain remained secure and untouched. This clarification played a key role in stabilizing market sentiment, which had initially turned highly negative. As fear subsided and confidence returned, DOT staged a strong 17% recovery, climbing from a low of $1.146 to a high of $1.354.
Network activity also rebounded, with transaction counts rising from 10,500 to 11,900 within a single day and daily active users expanding from 3,000 to 5,000. Total Value Locked grew by 11.29%, and the stablecoin market cap recovered to $77.83 million. According to CoinMarketCap data, bullish sentiment among voters climbed to 82%.
However, the recovery now faces a key resistance zone around $1.35. Before the exploit, DOT had been trading in a tight consolidation range between $1.20 and $1.35 since late March. The price has pushed back to the upper boundary of this range, but buying momentum has cooled. Cumulative Volume Delta has dropped sharply from 1.60 million to just 60,000 DOT, signaling weakening buyer pressure. Additionally, DOT's correlation with Ethereum fell from 0.86 to negative 0.55, suggesting more independent, event-driven movement.
Traders are now watching for a decisive breakout above $1.35 with strong volume, which could target $1.50. Conversely, a rejection could push the price back toward the $1.20 support level. A breakdown below that level would weaken the recovery structure.
