Ethereum bridge losses top $31.6M as B² freezes staking

Bridge risk came back into focus this week after two Ethereum-linked protocols lost about $31.69 million within hours, and a third project froze staking over a separate access breach.

Blockaid said it detected the AFX exploit around 21:30 UTC on July 22. An Arbitrum transaction showed 24.15 million USDC leaving a bridge used by AFX, a decentralized trading protocol on Arbitrum. AFX said the issue was limited to its USDC custody bridge and did not affect its trading systems, mainnet, or Arbitrum itself. The protocol's early review points to coordinated social engineering and an infrastructure compromise that started in a development environment and then reached internal build systems and validators. As of July 24, AFX said it was still verifying balances and working on recovery.

Soon after, an Ethereum transaction showed the Verus bridge releasing 1,137.4528 ETH plus seven token transfers. Blockaid estimated the unsupported withdrawals at about $7.54 million. SlowMist said the bridge approved eight withdrawals without proving that matching assets existed on the other side.

B² Network reported a different issue: unauthorized access to the upgrade authority for its staking contract. It paused normal staking, said the problem was contained, and offered manual unstaking requests through Discord while its review continues.