Two Ethereum bridges lose $31.7M within hours as third protocol halts staking

AFX and the Verus-Ethereum bridge suffered about $31.69 million in combined losses within hours of each other, while B² Network separately suspended token staking after unauthorized access to a contract upgrade authority.

Blockaid said it detected the AFX exploit at about 21:30 UTC on July 22. An Arbitrum transaction recorded 24.15 million USDC leaving the bridge operated by AFX, a decentralized trading protocol on Arbitrum.

AFX suspended its USDC custody bridge and said the incident was isolated from its trading infrastructure, mainnet, and the Arbitrum network. The affected component was a third-party bridge, not Arbitrum's native bridge.

In preliminary findings published July 24, AFX attributed the incident to coordinated social engineering and infrastructure compromise. The protocol said access appeared to begin in a development environment before escalating into internal build infrastructure and validator systems.

AFX said it was verifying balances, pursuing fund recovery and preparing remediation. As of July 24, it had not announced a completed return of funds or a finalized compensation plan.

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