Overview
- Axelar disclosed Friday that roughly $4.67 million in tokens bridged from the Axelar chain to Secret Network were taken through the Cosmos IBC pathway.
- The emergency committee immediately disabled the Secret and Secret‑SNIP connections and notified relevant exchanges and law enforcement to stop further movement of the stolen funds.
- Early technical findings point to a vulnerability in the Secret-side ICS-20 smart contract that handles IBC token transfers, and Axelar says its core protocol and other integrations do not appear to be affected.
- Axelar is conducting a formal investigation and has promised a detailed post-mortem while the affected bridge routes remain offline as engineers review the attack path and assess recovery options.
- The breach adds to a string of recent DeFi and infrastructure exploits that have drained liquidity and strained projects, highlighting that cross-chain bridge contracts often become the weakest link between otherwise secure blockchains.