Another Bridge, Another Bite: Allbridge Pauses After $1.65M Pool Heist 🏊

Allbridge Core, a cross-chain stablecoin bridge, paused its protocol on Sunday as a precaution following a "security incident" that drained approximately $1.65 million from its Solana deployment. The project announced the pause in a post on X, telling users with liquidity in affected pools to withdraw their funds while investigators examine the exploit. Onchain analyst Lookonchain reported that the attacker had already moved the stolen assets from Solana to Ethereum and routed them through privacy pools.

According to Lookonchain's Onchain Lens account, the attacker executed a $1.12 million USDC ($USDC) flash loan from Kamino before conducting rapid USDC/USDT swaps that distorted the exchange rate inside the Allbridge Core stablecoin pool. The attacker then withdrew liquidity at the manipulated rates, repaid the flash loan, and retained the remainder as profit. Allbridge Core appealed directly to the exploiter, stating: "The resulting pool imbalance created a temporary positive arbitrage window. If you took advantage of it, please consider returning funds… this will go directly toward compensating affected LPs."

The Allbridge Core incident marks at least the sixth attack on a cross-chain bridge since May, underscoring the persistent appeal of bridges as targets because they typically hold large pools of liquidity backing bridged assets on destination chains. In June, Taiko, an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain, urged users to withdraw assets from its bridges after attackers exploited one of its bridge protocols and stole $1.7 million; the bridge reopened 11 days later following a four-step recovery plan and full reimbursement of affected users. Weeks earlier, Secret Network suffered a $4.67 million exploit through an "infinite mint" bug on a vulnerable smart contract that produced unbacked versions of Axelar-wrapped assets.

Other recent cross-chain bridge incidents include exploits targeting the Gravity Bridge, Verus Bridge, and Butter Network. The recurring pattern of bridge exploits has drawn renewed attention to the structural risks of cross-chain infrastructure, with each incident prompting temporary suspensions, recovery plans, and in some cases appeals for the return of misappropriated funds.