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AFX Trade bridge exploit drains about $24 million, attacker offered 30% bounty

The stolen USDC was quickly swapped for 12,468 ETH on Ethereum, while the exchange suspended bridge operations and said the incident was isolated to its custody bridge.

Reported · Written up by our desk · Market Structure

AFX Trade, a decentralized perpetuals exchange on Arbitrum that settles in USDC, was drained of about $24 million after an exploit targeted a USDC custody bridge the protocol operates, according to Decrypt and security firm Blockaid.

On-chain tracking cited by PeckShield shows the attacker bridged the stolen USDC to Ethereum and exchanged it for 12,468 ETH, now held in a single wallet. AFX said the exact attack vector is still under investigation and that it halted bridge operations after detecting the incident.

Arbitrum’s co-founder Steven Goldfeder said the network’s native bridge has not been hacked or exploited and that the transactions came from a third party protocol, while AFX emphasized that neither its trading infrastructure and mainnet nor the Arbitrum network itself was compromised.

Hours later, AFX publicly offered a return plan to the attacker, asking for repayment of 70% of the funds and offering to keep the remaining 30% as a white hat bounty, Decrypt noted. The theft also follows other DeFi losses in 2026, including an $18 million drain from fellow Arbitrum perpetuals venue Ostium the prior week.

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