From the afternoon of March 20, 2026, the ONUS digital asset trading platform suddenly experienced widespread system failures: users could not log in, could not execute trades, and especially could not withdraw funds. The outage quickly caused panic in the community as assets became "stuck" within the system.

According to an announcement from HVA Investment Joint Stock Company, the cause stemmed from regulatory authorities conducting inspections at several related units. This process temporarily disabled accounting personnel and transaction authentication devices (OTP), preventing the system from approving withdrawal orders.

Data from HVA showed that the scale of affected assets was substantial. Approximately 80% of investors' assets are currently held at securities companies and fund management firms, awaiting withdrawal approval, while the remaining 20% are frozen at partner systems. This means most assets still exist on the books, but are "frozen" in terms of liquidity.

Market reaction occurred immediately. HVA stock fell more than 12%, dropping to around 12,300 dong/share in the end-of-week session, reflecting investor concerns about systemic risk.

The incident also drew attention to the person behind the ecosystem: Vuong Le Vinh Nhan (Eric Vuong). Born in 1984 in Can Tho, he began his career as a pharmacist before pivoting to the fintech sector and co-founding VNDC – the predecessor to ONUS.

Currently, he holds multiple important positions:
- Chairman of HVA Group's Board of Directors
- General Director of FundGo fund
- Connected to Vemanti Group – the unit that acquired 100% of ONUS in October 2025

In terms of investment, HVA once held 10% of VNDC and continued investing 25 billion dong into ONUS Chain in 2024. Additionally, this ecosystem expanded to many other legal entities such as TrustPay, DNEX (digital asset exchange established in September 2025 with charter capital of only 2 billion dong) and other investment activities.

However, this was not the first time the ecosystem faced problems. Previously, in December 2021, ONUS faced a major data breach incident when approximately 9TB of data – including personal information and transaction history of over 1.92 million accounts – was offered for sale.

Looking at the current operational structure, it can be seen that the ONUS ecosystem does not operate completely on-chain, but instead depends on multiple intermediary layers such as banks, securities companies, and internal approval processes. When a critical link like the authentication system or personnel is disrupted, the entire transaction processing capability can be halted.

A notable point is that this incident did not result from hacking or cyberattacks, but from operational and system control issues. However, the consequences for users are not much different: assets still display, but cannot be accessed or withdrawn.

CafeF