Aethir halts bridge exploit, limits losses under $90K

Aethir detected and stopped an exploit on its cross-chain bridge contracts linking Ethereum to other chains and disconnected the compromised components, the company reported Friday. The team isolated the breach, coordinated with exchanges to block attacker wallets and capped direct losses at under $90,000. Aethir pledged to compensate affected users.

Aethir reported that the main ATH token supply on Ethereum remained intact after the bridge components were isolated. The platform said it is working with law enforcement and exchanges to trace, freeze and recover illicit funds.

Exchanges including Binance, South Korea’s Upbit and Bithumb, and HTX crypto exchange responded to requests to blacklist wallets tied to the incident. The Web3 security firm ZeroShadow provided technical analysis to support the investigation.

A separate blockchain analytics report issued earlier estimated losses near $400,000 and tracked bridged funds moving from the BNB Chain to Tron. Aethir disputed that higher estimate and reiterated that its Ethereum token supply was not affected by the compromise of bridge adapters.

The platform plans to publish a full compensation plan next week and will release a list of attacker wallets and a detailed post-mortem on its Discord channel. A repayment plan and technical details will be published when the investigation concludes.

Aethir operates a decentralized GPU cloud that aggregates GPU resources for AI, gaming and enterprise workloads rather than relying on centralized data centers. The company reported $127.8 million in revenue for 2025 and said its network included at least 440,000 GPU containers across 94 countries by year-end. Investors include Animoca Brands and Hashkey, and Aethir has raised more than $140 million for its ecosystem.

The incident follows a series of attacks on decentralized finance and cross-chain infrastructure. Security trackers recorded nearly $170 million stolen from multiple protocols in the first quarter of 2026, an industrywide tally tied to exploits of bridges and smart-contract adapters.