Garden Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $450K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2026 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1049 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

On July 26, 2026, cross-chain atomic swap protocol Garden Finance suffered a supply chain compromise affecting its Hash Time-Locked Contracts (HTLC), resulting in an initial drain of approximately $450,000 in USDT across Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, and Solana.

Details of the Exploit

The exploit was an off-chain supply chain attack rather than a direct smart contract code vulnerability. An attacker compromised the off-chain database of an independent solver integrated with Garden Finance and injected forged transaction records. Because the protocol relies on solver state data to process cross-chain atomic swaps between Bitcoin and EVM/Solana networks, these fraudulent records deceived the HTLC contracts into releasing escrowed USDT assets directly to the attacker without valid matching inputs.

Garden Finance immediately took its front-end web application offline to prevent further improper fund releases, confirming that while core smart contracts remained secure, the breach stemmed entirely from off-chain solver infrastructure.

Block Data Reference

EVM Attacker Address: 0x25b224c0…316999

Solana Attacker Address: WZy4xxpqktWa1b6MPMRiWsD487CT8mDcapB6GufBJCH

Example EVM Exploit Transaction: 0x9d7a961a…29d395

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Garden Finance
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Bridge
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Official Website garden.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @gardenfi
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

What the Attacker Needed to Succeed

Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.

Technical Knowledge Deep understanding of other and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Garden Finance's contract logic - root cause: bridge
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single atomic block
Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Likely — with a thorough Other audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Garden Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (July 2026).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Other are guarded by proper access controls and input validation
  • Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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