Arbitrum Perpetuals Exchange AFX Trade Suffers $24 Million Exploit

AFX Trade, a decentralized perpetuals exchange operating on Arbitrum, experienced an exploit resulting in the loss of approximately $24.15 million. The incident, which occurred on Wednesday, targeted a USDC bridge operated by the protocol. Security firm Blockaid confirmed the amount of funds drained. The exchange stated that the breach was confined to this specific bridge. On-chain analysis indicates that the stolen funds were converted into 12,468 ETH, which are currently held in a single wallet. AFX Trade has paused its bridge operations following the incident. The exact method of attack remains under investigation by the protocol's engineering and security teams. The protocol has offered the attacker a bounty, proposing that 70% of the stolen funds be returned, with the remaining 30% kept as a “white hat” reward. This approach has been used in previous crypto exploits. Steven Goldfeder, a co-founder of Arbitrum, clarified that the network's native bridge was not compromised and that the exploit originated from a third-party protocol. AFX Trade reiterated that its trading infrastructure, mainnet, and the broader Arbitrum network were not affected. The firm is collaborating with ecosystem partners and security firms to track the stolen assets. This event contributes to a challenging year for the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, which has seen over $840 million lost to hacks in 2026. This incident follows another recent exploit on Arbitrum, where the Ostium perpetuals venue lost $18 million due to a compromised oracle key.