Incident Overview
On September 25, 2025, Griffin AI's GAIN token crashed 90% within 24 hours of launch after an attacker exploited a cross-chain bridge vulnerability to mint 5 billion unauthorized tokens. The exploit occurred through a fake LayerZero peer that bypassed official Ethereum endpoints, resulting in approximately $3-4 million in losses and wiping out $36 million in market capitalization.
The attacker deployed a malicious Ethereum contract and added it as a peer for GAIN's LayerZero cross-chain setup, creating an "unauthorized LayerZero peer" that bypassed Griffin AI's official endpoints. This allowed the minting of 5 billion GAIN tokens on BNB Chain, far exceeding the project's 1 billion supply cap. The exploiter quickly dumped approximately 147.5 million GAIN tokens on PancakeSwap and through over-the-counter trades within an hour, causing the token price to collapse from $0.25 to $0.0273.
The stolen funds were then bridged via deBridge to multiple networks including Solana, Ethereum, Base, and Arbitrum. According to blockchain data, around 5 million GAIN tokens were swapped for 2,955 BNB (~$3M), which was then bridged to Ethereum, converted to 720 ETH, and 700 ETH was deposited into Tornado Cash for laundering.
Incident Report
Protocol Information
Market Context at Time of Hack
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.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to GriffinAI, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 2025).
- Verify all logic paths related to False Peer Exploit / Access Control are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control Attacks attack class for patterns
- 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.
Free TrialRelated Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next GriffinAI
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