What happened?
Garden Finance was exploited for more than $10.8 million across multiple chains after an attacker drained freezeable assets and quickly swapped funds through EVM and Solana addresses. On-chain investigator ZachXBT revealed that over 25% of Garden’s historical volume involved stolen funds and tied the platform to legacy Ren infrastructure. The team sent an on-chain message offering a 10% white‑hat bounty but has not issued a public statement.
Who does this affect?
Users who bridged or swapped assets on Garden — especially those using large BTC swap limits — face direct losses and higher risk because stolen funds flowed through the platform. Exchanges, liquidity providers and DeFi projects that interacted with Garden can suffer reputational damage, frozen funds and potential delistings. Regulators and compliance teams are affected too, since links to laundering and DPRK‑associated hacks raise legal and sanctions exposure for counterparties.
Why does this matter?
This undermines trust in cross‑chain bridges and could push traders and institutions away from Garden and similar protocols, cutting volume and liquidity. Markets may respond with price pressure on related tokens, tighter exchange listings, more rigorous due diligence and possible delistings, while concerns about on‑chain mixing could reduce demand for bridge services. Overall, increased regulatory scrutiny, reputational damage and drained liquidity could raise costs for DeFi, slow innovation and shift capital toward better‑audited, compliant venues.