Cluster of bridge and protocol exploits reportedly drains about $35M.

What happened.

A series of reported exploits affected AFX Trade, the Verus Ethereum bridge, and the Balance stablecoin within a short window. The supplied record estimates combined losses at about $35M and characterizes the event as strongly corroborated across five source records, including PeckShield.

AFX Trade, an Arbitrum perpetual exchange, reportedly lost about $24M after bridge keys were compromised. The record says the attacker swapped the proceeds for about 12,467 ETH. Hours later, the Verus Ethereum bridge was reportedly compromised. Balance then reportedly suffered an exploit that drained about $1M from its bitcoin vaults, after which its stablecoin collapsed 99%.

Why it matters.

The cluster places bridge infrastructure and key management at the center of the reported losses. The related evidence also cites compromises or drains involving SecondFi, the Midnight/NIGHT Wanchain bridge, and a separate Zilliqa transaction halt tied to a key-exposure bug.

For bridge-dependent protocols, the practical issue is not a forecast about any asset. It is whether bridged-asset exposure and multisig or key-custody arrangements remain clearly accounted for as incident details emerge.

What to watch next.

Watch for further source-backed confirmation of each incident’s scope, the status of affected bridges and vaults, and whether the reported loss and key-compromise details change as the cases are assessed.