AFX Trade, a perpetual futures exchange built on Arbitrum, reports that approximately $24 million was drained from its protocol and has publicly offered the attacker a 30% bounty to return the remaining funds.

Details of the Drain

AFX Trade attributes the loss to an exploit targeting its Arbitrum-based perpetual decentralized exchange, a platform where users trade leveraged derivatives directly onchain. The $24 million figure has been disclosed by AFX Trade itself. As of publication, the protocol has not released a confirmed technical root cause explaining how the funds were removed, and the claim has not been independently verified through onchain analysis.

Perpetual DEXs like AFX Trade operate in an increasingly competitive landscape of onchain venues challenging centralized order books, a space that includes platforms such as Hyperliquid, GMX, and dYdX. When a smart-contract-based platform reports a loss of this magnitude, the competitive pressure underscores the importance of rapid incident response. DeFi protocols lost over $1 billion to exploits in 2024 alone, making security incidents a recurring and closely watched feature of the sector.

The 30% Bounty Offer

AFX Trade is offering the attacker 30% of the drained amount in exchange for returning the balance. Based on the reported sum, this structure would permit the exploiter to retain several million dollars while remitting the remainder to the protocol.

Such proposals are typically characterized as negotiated, white-hat-style recovery attempts, designed to provide an exploiter with a legal-adjacent off-ramp rather than forcing them to launder the full amount. The approach has precedent in DeFi: in 2023, Euler Finance recovered most of a roughly $200 million drain after extending a similar offer, though outcomes have varied across incidents and are never guaranteed. AFX Trade has not indicated whether the attacker has accepted or responded to the offer. The strategy reflects a recovery-focused posture, prioritizing the return of user funds over immediate pursuit of the responsible party.

What Comes Next

The key near-term question is whether any funds will be recovered, either through the bounty arrangement or through onchain tracing of the stolen assets across the Arbitrum network. Blockchain analytics firms such as TRM Labs and Chainalysis routinely assist in tracking illicit fund flows across chains, and exchanges frequently freeze deposits flagged as connected to exploits, though cross-chain movement can complicate recovery.

Users and observers will be monitoring for official incident updates covering platform operations, individual exposure details, and any post-incident security analysis from AFX Trade. Arbitrum remains one of the largest DeFi ecosystems by activity, as reflected in its onchain total value locked, which means exploit response on the network is closely tracked.

The incident also contributes to a broader regulatory conversation surrounding onchain financial products. U.S. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce recently suggested that crypto vaults and onchain lending may fall under securities laws, a debate that incidents of this nature tend to intensify as regulators assess user-protection risks in DeFi.

For now, the situation remains a developing incident based solely on AFX Trade's own disclosure rather than verified third-party data.