Arbitrum Perp DEX AFX Trade Drained of $24M, Offers Hacker 30% to Return It
AFX Trade, a decentralized perpetuals exchange on Arbitrum, lost about $24.15 million in a hack targeting its USDC custody bridge. The protocol said the incident is still under investigation, but it quickly suspended bridge operations and described the damage as isolated to the AFX-operated bridge, with no compromise to its main trading infrastructure or the Arbitrum network itself. On-chain tracking shows the attacker bridged the stolen USDC to Ethereum and swapped it for 12,468 ETH, now held in one wallet. Arbitrum’s co-founder emphasized that the network’s native bridge was not affected and that the issue involved a third-party protocol. AFX also offered the attacker a 70% bounty to return the funds. The breach adds to a severe year for DeFi hacks and follows a recent $18 million exploit of another Arbitrum perpetuals platform, Ostium.
