Another wave of DeFi exploits has hit the crypto space, with three separate bridge attacks draining roughly $35.55 million in a single day. While that amount is far smaller than the $600 million hack wave earlier this year, the timing feels uncomfortably familiar.
AFX suffered the biggest loss — attackers stole $24.2 million in USDC from its Arbitrum bridge and moved the funds to Ethereum. BSquared Network lost around $3.9 million after an attacker drained 8.6 million B2 tokens. VerusCoin also saw a bridge exploit worth roughly $7.5 million. All three attacks targeted cross-chain bridges, and though the protocols operate on different ecosystems, the attack vector was identical.
A familiar pattern
These exploits come just as DeFi seemed to be recovering. According to DeFi data, total value locked had climbed by more than $10 billion in July — the strongest monthly increase since the Q1-Q2 hack wave that wiped out over $600 million and sent TVL down to Q2 2024 levels near $65 billion. That earlier wave triggered a sharp liquidity outflow, with Ethereum alone losing over $10 billion in TVL in 48 hours.
Now, the same narrative is resurfacing. The market is already calling this the worst day for DeFi in months, bringing back memories of the earlier hack-driven selloff.
Drift exploit hacker stirs more unease
To make things worse, the hacker behind the Drift Protocol exploit — one of the largest DeFi breaches this year at $285 million — has started moving stolen funds again. Onchain Lens reports the attacker is funneling ETH through the Tornado Cash router in repeated 100 ETH batches, with multiple transactions every minute. While the transfers don’t necessarily signal an immediate selloff, they draw attention back to that incident at a time when DeFi is already dealing with fresh bridge exploits.
I think the timing makes these events stand out more than the dollar amount alone would suggest. If more exploits follow, the market could shift focus from capital inflows back to protocol security, potentially reviving the same DeFi FUD that dominated earlier this year. For now, the recovery that began in July is looking fragile.
