$450k Garden Finance Exploit Highlights Risks of Off-Chain Infrastructure Breaches

Garden Finance, a cross-chain bridge and atomic swap protocol, temporarily took its app offline after an independent solver's off-chain database was compromised. The breach allowed an attacker to drain around $450,000 in USDT from Garden's hash time-locked contracts (HTLC) on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and BNB Smart Chain.

The incident occurred on July 27, 2026, when Blockaid reported the ongoing exploit. However, a Garden Finance spokesperson clarified that neither the protocol nor its HTLC smart contracts had been compromised. The attacker instead breached the off-chain database of an independent solver and inserted fraudulent transaction records.

Garden Finance said no user funds were lost or placed at risk in the incident, which affected only solver-owned assets. The company is working with security firms to trace and recover the funds, including zeroShadow, Quantstamp, and Blockaid. Garden expects to restore services shortly after completing security checks.