axelar

The blockchain research organization Common Prefix disclosed that on June 10, hackers exploited a vulnerability in the Secret Network and Axelar cross-chain bridge contract to forge deposits and mint uncollateralized tokens, subsequently cashing out approximately $4.67 million.The attack went undetected for seven days until a normal cross-chain transfer failed due to insufficient funds in the escrow account on June 17, revealing the anomaly. The root of the vulnerability lies in the fact that when the contract changed from an escrow model to a minting model, it deleted two key functions responsible for verifying the source of transfers, and it had never undergone an external audit since its deployment in early 2023. Secret Network pointed out that the Axelar bridging infrastructure failed to trigger any effective anomaly monitoring or emergency pause mechanism before the assets were stolen on a large scale.The stolen funds were routed through Osmosis to Ethereum and exchanged for ETH on CoW Protocol, then dispersed into exchanges such as KuCoin, ChangeNow, and HitBTC. Currently, approximately $672,000 remains in the attackers' Axelar wallet. Secret Network has requested Axelar to freeze that address, but the request was denied. Axelar emphasized that its core protocol was never affected, and the exploited contract was not developed or maintained by Axelar. Currently, Axelar has disabled the related cross-chain connections and stated that it is coordinating follow-up actions with exchanges and law enforcement agencies.

The cross-chain protocol Axelar Network released a statement regarding the recent security incident related to Secret Network, stating that there is a misunderstanding within the community about the event. Both Axelar and the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC) were not attacked or compromised. The affected token smart contracts were neither developed, deployed, nor maintained by Axelar, and Axelar's firewall mechanism also prevented the impact from spreading to other chains.It is reported that the exploited contract is a forked version based on CW20-ICS20, but the developers removed two core security checks, resulting in an "infinite minting" vulnerability. By deleting the verification mechanisms originally used to prevent such issues, this fork altered the original trust model of the contract and did not undergo a new security audit.Axelar Network explained that anyone can deploy contracts for cross-chain asset wrapping through IBC, and similar contracts have also been used to wrap tokens from other chains into Secret Network. However, the Secret side fork version in this incident has vulnerabilities due to the removal of key security checks. This incident is not a unique logical flaw, nor is it an issue with the IBC protocol itself, but rather a security risk introduced by modifications to third-party contracts.

Axelar Network stated on platform X that an event affecting assets bridged from the Axelar chain to the Secret Network via IBC has been discovered, with approximately $4.67 million worth of tokens stolen.According to the information currently available, the issue is limited to the ICS-20 smart contract on the Secret side, which is part of the Cosmos IBC connection between Secret and Axelar, used to bridge assets from Axelar to Secret. The Axelar Emergency Committee immediately disabled the Secret and Secret-SNIP connections upon discovering the incident. The team is contacting relevant exchanges and law enforcement agencies. The incident is limited to assets bridged from Axelar to Secret via IBC. Other IBC connections or Secret tokens do not appear to be affected. Other Axelar integrations are unaffected. The core protocol of Axelar is not impacted.Additionally, according to Common Prefix's analysis of the Secret Network incident, an attacker exploited an infinite minting vulnerability in a modified CW20-ICS20 token contract on Secret, stealing approximately $4.67 million. The attacker minted arbitrary Secret-wrapped Axelar assets on Secret by launching a new Cosmos chain (with only one validator) and self-relaying IBC packets to it. The contract did not verify which IBC channel the inbound tokens came from. The attacker exited through the Axelar bridge. The Axelar protocol was not compromised and prevented the spread of contagion to other chains.

Moonrock Capital founder Simon Dedic posted on X commenting on Circle's acquisition of Axelar, stating: "Another acquisition, another RUG. Circle acquires Axelar but explicitly excludes the foundation and AXL tokens, which is simply a criminal act. Even if it doesn't violate the law, it goes against ethics. If you are a founder looking to issue tokens: treat them like equity or get lost."Previously, Circle announced the acquisition of Axelar's initial development team, Interop Labs, but Axelar Network, Axelar Foundation, and AXL tokens are not included in this acquisition.

USDC issuer Circle has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the Interop Labs team and its proprietary intellectual property. This acquisition is expected to be completed in early 2026. Circle looks forward to contributing to the broader interoperability space and continuing to explore opportunities that align with its vision of an open, interconnected, and scalable on-chain economy.Interop Labs has been a key contributor to Axelar, one of the most advanced frameworks in cross-chain communication and token transfer, and has been driving the core development of Axelar alongside a growing community of open-source contributors. By directly integrating the talent and technology of Interop Labs into Circle, the aim is to accelerate the advancement of two core initiatives: the first is Arc—Circle's blockchain layer designed for enterprise applications, committed to becoming the operating system of the internet economy;The second is the cross-chain transfer protocol. It is important to clarify that this transaction only involves the Interop Labs team and its proprietary intellectual property. As this team joins Circle, the Axelar network, foundation, and AXL token will continue to operate independently under community governance, and the open-source intellectual property will remain open. Another contributor to the Axelar project, Common Prefix, will take over the relevant work of Interop Labs.

ChainCatcher news, according to The Block, the Axelar Foundation has announced a strategic AXL token sale worth $30 million. The foundation stated on Tuesday that several cryptocurrency investors participated in this token sale, including Arrington Capital, Distributed Global, Electric Capital, Laser Digital, C² Ventures, Plassa Capital, and Wagmi Ventures. However, the foundation declined to disclose the sale price or valuation of the AXL tokens. The Axelar Foundation plans to expand the use of dollars through stablecoins and support the institutional tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) via its interoperability protocol.A spokesperson for the foundation stated that these investments were made "in recent months." "Part of the investment involves purchasing unlocked AXL tokens from the Axelar Foundation's community project allocation, which will be subject to a new lock-up period ranging from six to twelve months." This means that the Axelar Foundation is not the only seller in this transaction. The spokesperson declined to disclose the identities of other sellers. Other sellers may have facilitated the transaction through over-the-counter (OTC) trading, where investors acquired AXL tokens that are already in circulation.According to the foundation's spokesperson, the latest $30 million investment announced by the Axelar Foundation, combined with the previous $100 million raised through multiple rounds of financing and a public token sale, further increases its total investment amount.

ChainCatcher news, according to official sources, former Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks will become a member of the newly established Advisory Committee of the Axelar Foundation.

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, Canary Capital, an investment firm focused on digital assets founded by former Valkyrie Funds co-founder Steven McClurg, is planning to launch an ETF that tracks the price of Axelar (AXL).The company submitted an S-1 filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday, initiating the process to launch such a fund. This hedge fund has previously filed for several other ETFs, some of which have received SEC confirmation and are awaiting approval.It is reported that Axelar is a cross-chain protocol that connects blockchains and has been integrated by major players such as JPMorgan, Microsoft, Uniswap, and MetaMask, and former Coinbase legal chief Brian Brooks has joined Axelar's new institutional advisory board.

ChainCatcher news reports that, according to Arkham monitoring, the DWF Labs address transferred 2.5 million AXL, worth approximately 1.11 million USD, to an address marked by Arkham as "suspected Axelar Network" two days ago. Based on the transfer records, it is speculated that the two parties may have ended their market-making cooperation plan, and the actual situation will depend on updates from DWF Labs and the Axelar Network team.According to on-chain data, DWF Labs received 2.5 million AXL on December 9, 2023, which was worth 1.93 million USD at that time. Observational data on March 1, 2024, showed that DWF Labs held a total of 5 million AXL, valued at approximately 12 million USD.On May 6, 2024, DWF liquidity market launched Axelar (AXL), and on October 12 of the same year, DWF Labs deposited 500,000 AXL into Binance, which was worth about 420,000 USD at that time.As of the time of publication, AXL is currently priced at 0.4093 USD, with a 24-hour increase of 2.92%, a 7-day decrease of 16.50%, a 30-day decrease of 21.87%, and a 90-day decrease of 58.28%.

ChainCatcher news, the Axelar token burn page is now live. Since the network upgrade was completed on February 21, over 90,000 AXL tokens have been burned in the past 5 days, with the current inflation rate at 4.8%.The Axelar Cobalt upgrade strengthens the AXL token economic model, ensuring that 98% of AXL transaction fees from new cross-chain interoperability connections are burned, while the remaining 2% is transferred to the community fund pool. The new blockchain connects through the Interchain Amplifier, a mechanism that is part of Axelar's Mobius Development Stack (MDS), and provides security through AXL staking in the validator reward pool. The reward pool supports new connections without the need for inflationary incentives.

ChainCatcher message, the planned network upgrade for Axelar has been successfully completed. The Axelar network, Satellite, cross-chain token services, relay services, token transfers, and general messaging have been restored online.The Gas fees for Axelar network transfers (AXL tokens) are now sent to the burn address, instead of being allocated to token holders.

ChainCatcher news, the stablecoin issuance protocol usdx.money announced the integration of Axelar's Interchain Token Service (ITS). USDX and its yield-bearing token sUSDX have been natively deployed on three chains: Arbitrum, BNB Chain, and Ethereum. USDX is a delta-neutral stablecoin pegged to 1 US dollar, while sUSDX is a yield-bearing token generated by staking USDX in a smart contract to earn base trading yields from CEX.Axelar's Interchain Token Service (ITS) allows tokens like USDX and sUSDX to exist on more blockchains. With an existing TVL of 600 million USD, USDX is expected to achieve further growth across multiple chains using Axelar's technology.

ChainCatcher news, according to official information, Flow has officially integrated with the Axelar network, becoming the 70th connected chain. Through the Axelar integration, applications based on Flow can access a broader cross-chain liquidity and applications on more than 70 blockchains, including chains such as Avalanche, BNB Chain, and the Cosmos ecosystem.This integration is achieved through Axelar's Interchain amplifier, and Flow is the first EVM chain to integrate using the Interchain amplifier, powered by Axelar's MDS.

ChainCatcher news, according to The Block, the TON Foundation has chosen Axelar's Mobius development stack as its preferred interoperability solution, aimed at enhancing the connectivity of the TON blockchain with other chains, enabling asset transfers between TON and other blockchains, and supporting the development of cross-chain decentralized applications.This integration will also prevent liquidity fragmentation, ensuring that assets do not become isolated on different chains, and will reduce user operation costs by providing a unified cross-chain experience.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, Lido DAO has voted to approve the introduction of stETH to the BNB Chain, and will adopt a solution in collaboration with Axelar and Wormhole to achieve this goal.Lido explains that bridging Lido Staked ETH (stETH) to the BNB Chain is an important milestone, marking Lido's first connection to a Layer 1 blockchain protocol outside the Ethereum ecosystem.Lido's market share in Ethereum staking fell below 30% at the beginning of 2024, after which it reached 1 million validators in April 2024. Additionally, DefiLlama data shows that the current total locked value (TVL) of the entire DeFi ecosystem is approximately $83.4 billion, with Lido's liquid staking accounting for $25.94 billion of the market TVL.

ChainCatcher news, the cross-chain interoperability network Axelar (AXL) Foundation will collaborate with blockchain analytics company Metrika to host a panel discussion at the Zero Point Forum in Zurich from July 1 to July 3. The discussion will focus on insights derived from specific papers and challenges related to asset tokenization, while hosting representatives from Citibank, Deutsche Bank, and Mastercard.