False Alarm on the Bridge 🌉 Blockaid Yanks $13.3M BTTC "Exploit" Alert After Sun Says It's Sunset, Not Sunset of Trust

Blockchain security firm Blockaid has withdrawn an exploit alert on the BitTorrent Chain [BTTC] Bridge after determining that a $13.3 million asset drain was an authorized internal operation tied to the project's planned bridge shutdown. The sequence of events unfolded within minutes on Tuesday when Blockaid's monitoring system flagged suspicious on-chain activity resembling a bridge compromise, prompting the firm to issue a public warning.

According to Blockaid's analysis, approximately $13.3 million in assets left the bridge's Ethereum predicate contracts. The assets included about 7,285 ETH and multiple ERC-20 tokens. The BTTC bridge admin Safe executed a privileged proxy upgrade before an address received the CFO_ROLE on the upgraded RootChainManager. That address then called the withdrawAll[address[]] function to drain assets from the bridge contracts, closely matching the pattern of a bridge exploit and leading Blockaid to classify the event as a potential security incident while it investigated.

Shortly after the alert, Tron founder Justin Sun replied publicly that the BTTC team had completed the BTTC Bridge Sunset Program. Sun said the bridge shutdown had been finalized as part of an internal operational process and that all user funds remained safe. He added that users could continue depositing and withdrawing bridged assets through partner centralized exchanges, and that the BitTorrent team would shift its focus to decentralized AI initiatives and maintaining the BitTorrent decentralized protocol. Blockaid subsequently updated its assessment, stating that the project team had approved the upgrade and asset transfers and were "part of internal operation, not an exploit."

The clarification aligns with an announcement BitTorrent published on June 12, in which the project said it would begin a phased shutdown of the bridge, close deposits from June 13, and complete all bridge withdrawals by June 18. Users were instructed to migrate bridged assets back to their native blockchains before the deadline, while BTTC's staking, validator operations, and broader network were said to remain unaffected. The closure is part of a broader roadmap shift, with BitTorrent directing users toward centralized exchange infrastructure for future cross-chain transfers.