Crypto Bridges Under Fire: $35M Lost in 7 Hours as Security Risks Ignored

The past two days have seen three major crypto bridges lose a total of $35.55 million in just seven hours, with AFX Trade being the biggest victim.

AFX's Arbitrum-based perpetuals DEX lost $24.15 million after an attacker used five validator signatures to clear the bridge's quorum and steal USDC funds.

The stolen funds were then moved to Ethereum, swapped for about 12,467 ETH, and the protocol offered the hacker a deal: return 70% of the stolen funds and keep the remaining 30% as a white-hat bounty.

This is not an isolated incident, with Verus losing $7.54 million on July 23 after an attacker abused the bridge's import path to trigger Ethereum-side payouts without matching value on the Verus source chain.