AFX Bridge Drain Leads to $24.15M Loss and Massive ETH Conversion

Security firm Blockaid detected the exploit at 9:30 p.m. UTC, identifying a vulnerability specific to the bridge AFX maintains for routing USDC deposits from Arbitrum to its sovereign Layer 1 trading environment. While the incident occurred within the Arbitrum ecosystem, Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder confirmed that the breach was isolated to the third-party protocol, leaving the native Arbitrum bridge unaffected.

On-chain investigators, including PeckShield and Lookonchain, tracked the stolen assets as they were bridged to Ethereum and swapped for Ether at an average price of roughly $1,937 per token. As of now, the funds remain in the attacker's control. Neither AFX nor security partners have confirmed a recovery plan or a technical postmortem regarding how the unauthorized withdrawal bypassed security protocols. The incident highlights ongoing vulnerabilities in cross-chain infrastructure, following a series of similar high-profile exploits earlier this year.