TL;DR: On Sunday we detected and contained an attempted exploit targeting the protocol's cross-chain messaging and refund logic on Ethereum. No user funds were lost, and from first report to a completed fix took around 24 hours. As a precaution we paused deposits and quoting on Ethereum, Arbitrum and Tron. The fix has since been rolled out via a network upgrade, the protocol is back online, and any swaps held during the pause are being sent out automatically.
On Sunday, our team identified an attempted exploit targeting the protocol's cross-chain messaging and refund logic on Ethereum. Out of an abundance of caution, we quickly enabled safe mode, temporarily pausing deposits and quoting on Ethereum, with Arbitrum and Tron also paused as a precaution while we investigated.
The most important point: no user funds were lost. All funds remained secure throughout, and the network's safety measures worked as intended.
The team moved quickly to contain the situation, pausing the affected functionality within minutes of identifying the issue and keeping the community updated as we worked. From there, we investigated thoroughly, confirmed the root cause, and developed a fix. From first report to a completed fix, the entire turnaround took around 24 hours.
We deliberately took a conservative approach, keeping things paused until we were confident the network was secure rather than rushing to restore service.
Where things stand now
The fix has been rolled out via a network upgrade, and the protocol is back online. We will turn quoting back on once we have processed the backlog of swaps from the day. Any swaps that were held during the pause are now either being processed and sent out automatically or will be refunded, so there is nothing you need to do.
Incidents like this are a reminder of why we design the protocol to fail safe. The response worked as intended: we were able to pause quickly, protect funds, and ship a fix in short order. We are using what we learned to further harden the protocol and our monitoring going forward. We'll publish more details on the specifics of what happened in the coming weeks.
Security is, and will remain, one of our highest priorities.
We are grateful to our community, liquidity providers, and partners for their patience and support while we handled this carefully. Thank you for continuing to build and swap with Chainflip. Resources
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The full story
This article is one source in a clustered incident — the cluster page carries the summary, timeline and every other outlet covering it.
