AFX Trade, a derivatives protocol on Arbitrum, lost roughly $24.15 million in USDC after an attacker drained a bridge it operates, according to security firm Blockaid. Arbitrum’s team says its own native bridge was untouched, and the stolen funds have already moved to Ethereum.
AFX Trade, a protocol on Arbitrum, lost roughly $24.15 million in USDC after an attacker drained a bridge it operates, blockchain security firm Blockaid said. The firm reported that the exploit was confined to a bridge AFX runs and that it detected the breach at 21:30 UTC.
Where the stolen funds went
The attacker bridged the funds from Arbitrum to Ethereum and swapped them for 12,467 ETH, according to PeckShield. Onchain analytics account Lookonchain put the average swap price at $1,937.
That targeted contract had held about $24.2 million in USDC before the attack, DefiLlama data show, so almost everything locked inside it was taken. Those deposits had grown from around $19.3 million in mid-June.
Arbitrum says its bridge is intact
Steven Goldfeder, CEO of Offchain Labs, the team behind the Ethereum Layer 2 network Arbitrum, said the network was investigating. According to The Block, he said the transaction originated from a third-party protocol and that “the Arbitrum native bridge has not been hacked or exploited in any way”.
AFX, short for Anti-Fragile Exchange, describes itself as a sovereign Layer 1 blockchain for decentralized derivatives, offering USDC-margined perpetuals with up to 100x leverage on crypto, equities, ETFs and commodities. User deposits reach the protocol through the Arbitrum bridge contract that the attacker hit.
A run of Arbitrum exploits
This theft follows a string of attacks on Arbitrum protocols in July. On July 15, perpetuals exchange Ostium halted trading after an oracle exploit drained up to $18 million in USDC from its vault.
Markets barely moved. Ether traded near $1,928, roughly flat over 24 hours.
ARB slipped 0.3% to $0.0806, according to CoinGecko. The token had set an all-time low of $0.0705 on June 26.
Sources: The Block, The Defiant
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