Crypto Hacks Hit AFX and Verus Protocol Within Hours, Draining $31.6 Million

Two crypto bridges managed by decentralised perpetual exchange AFX and Verus Protocol were involved in the loss of more than $31.6 million (roughly Rs. 305 crore) through two separate hacks carried out within a period of just hours. According to Blockaid, the decentralised perpetual exchange AFX, which operates on Arbitrum, has lost $24.15 million (roughly Rs. 233 crore). Several hours after the first incident, Blockaid confirmed it found an attack on the Verus Ethereum Bridge that cost approximately $7.5 million (roughly Rs. 72.3 crore) worth of cryptocurrency. 

Investigators Point to Compromised Validator Keys in AFX Exploit 

The two hacks in succession point out how vulnerable cross-chain bridges are to attacks, because these platforms keep significant amounts of assets. Blockaid announced on Wednesday that it discovered a hack at 9:30 pm UTC targeting a bridge operated by AFX. The co-founder of Offchain Labs, Stephen Goldfeder, revealed that there had been a breach in a bridge. SunSec, who started the DeFiHackLabs Web3 security group and contributed to SEAL, noted that the evidence pointed to compromised keys, and not a smart contract logic flaw, causing the exploit.

According to Ido Ben-Natan, co-founder and CEO of Blockaid, the company's assessment was consistent with reports that five hot validator keys had been compromised. “This appears to have been an operational security incident rather than a smart contract vulnerability [...] The unauthorised withdrawal carried genuine validator signatures, meaning the bridge's onchain verification behaved exactly as designed rather than being bypassed.”

Earlier in May, Verus Protocol's Ethereum bridge was also exploited, as reported by the same on-chain security platform, Blockaid. The platform stated that its detection system caught this ongoing exploit on the Verus-Ethereum bridge, including a transaction on Etherscan showing a transfer of 1,625 Ether (ETH), 147,659 USDC (USDC), and 103.57 tBTC v2. 

According to DefiLlama, the second quarter of 2026 is already the most hacked quarter on record in terms of the number of attacks, with 83 hacks of crypto protocols. KelpDAO's $293 million (roughly Rs. 2,774 crore) hack and Drift Protocol's $280 million (roughly Rs. 2,652 crore) exploit were the largest incidents of the quarter.