Solana-based automated market maker Aquifer has lost roughly $2.5 million in an exploit involving wallets on Solana and Ethereum, with the protocol offering the attacker a 20% bounty for returning most of the funds.
Summary
- Solana based AMM Aquifer lost roughly $2.5 million in an exploit involving attacker addresses on Solana and Ethereum.
- Aquifer offered the attacker a 20% whitehat bounty if at least 80% of the assets are returned by Sept. 3.
- The exact point of compromise remains unclear, with no technical post mortem yet establishing how access to the affected wallets was obtained.
- Available information has not established that Aquifer’s smart contracts were exploited, leaving compromised wallet access as the main focus of the incident so far.
Blockchain security monitoring service Defimon reported the attack on Aug. 31, identifying separate Solana and Ethereum addresses controlled by the suspected exploiter. Aquifer later sent an on-chain whitehat offer seeking the return of at least 80% of the assets linked to the incident.
The offer gives the attacker until Sept. 3 at 14:00 UTC to transfer the assets, or their equivalent value, to recovery addresses provided by Aquifer. The person controlling the wallets may retain up to 20% of the funds as a whitehat bounty if the conditions are met.
Aquifer said it would not pursue civil claims arising from the exploit if the attacker complies with the terms, subject to applicable law. The agreement would not bind law enforcement agencies, regulators, sanctions authorities or other government bodies.
Aquifer exploit involves wallets on two chains
Aquifer operates as a proprietary automated market maker on Solana, where its liquidity is used to facilitate token swaps. DefiLlama describes the protocol as a prop AMM and currently lists its total value locked at around $2.8 million.
The addresses identified after the exploit show activity spanning Solana and Ethereum. Defimon linked the Solana address 7fTe9pvrwXJRBHq9MaSyVPR4PgEuhqLiA93Dxf4gRk7J and Ethereum address 0x2Dfe9e969796e2797278b02761dd9Ad6aE922746 to the attacker.
Aquifer’s whitehat message was authorized through the protocol’s Solana upgrade authority and published on-chain. The project supplied separate recovery addresses for Solana and Ethereum, allowing assets associated with the attack to be returned on either network.
Public information has not yet established exactly how the wallets were compromised. No technical post-mortem has been released explaining whether private keys, administrator credentials or another part of Aquifer’s operational infrastructure was exposed.
Available information similarly does not establish that Aquifer’s smart contract code was exploited. The use of addresses across Ethereum and Solana provides a trail for investigators tracking the assets, but does not by itself identify how access to the affected funds was obtained.
The incident follows several Solana-related attacks this year where the point of compromise was outside the underlying blockchain.
Solana protocols have faced different attack methods
In June, crypto.news previously reported that five legacy liquidity pools belonging to Raydium lost roughly $1.3 million after an attacker targeted retired AMM infrastructure.
On-chain investigator Specter said the Raydium attacker used a fake mint address to bypass validation checks in an older AMM program. The stolen assets included roughly 150,177 RAY, 5,603 SOL and 893,700 USDC.
Raydium said its active pools and current users were unaffected because the vulnerable infrastructure had already been phased out. The protocol committed to reimbursing the affected assets from its treasury.
A separate July incident involving Across Protocol produced losses of less than $4 million after an attacker fabricated Solana deposit events. The attacker created 1,627 fake deposits with a combined stated value of $41.7 million and requested payouts across 18 destination chains.
Risk Labs’ relayer processed 581 of the fraudulent requests before Solana operations were suspended, advancing approximately $4.5 million of its own capital. Around $500,000 belonging to the attacker remained trapped, bringing the net loss below $4 million.
Across later said the Solana attack stemmed from a flaw in Risk Labs’ off-chain event-reading software and not a vulnerability in its smart contracts or the Solana network. Legitimate user transfers were completed or refunded.
Operational security failures have produced losses elsewhere without attackers needing to exploit smart contract logic.
Wallet access has become a major attack route
Stablecoin payments company Triple-A confirmed in July that unauthorized access to its treasury wallets resulted in the theft of company-owned digital assets. On-chain researchers initially tracked suspicious withdrawals across Ethereum, Solana, TRON and TON, with some reports identifying activity on Polygon and Arbitrum.
Triple-A later said client funds remained unaffected because customer assets were segregated from the compromised treasury infrastructure. Researchers had estimated the loss at roughly $11.8 million before the company confirmed the breach.
The company did not disclose whether the attacker obtained private keys, credentials or another form of access. Triple-A said cybersecurity specialists and Singapore police were working on the investigation and asset tracing.
Private key and wallet compromises have accounted for a substantial portion of crypto thefts in 2026. CertiK reported in July that digital asset losses reached $1.32 billion during the first half of the year, down 46.8% from the same period in 2025.
Despite the lower total, the security firm said wallet compromises became the largest attack method during the second quarter, replacing phishing as the main source of losses.
Another Solana project, Step Finance, ultimately shut down its operations after an attack earlier this year targeted devices used by members of its executive team. Attackers gained access to treasury and fee wallets and moved approximately 261,854 SOL, while later estimates placed total losses across affected assets near $40 million.
Investigators determined that Step Finance’s smart contracts were not the point of entry. Compromised endpoints allowed the attackers to access wallets used by the project, and the financial damage later contributed to the decision to wind down the platform.
A similar distinction will depend on Aquifer publishing more details about its own breach. The protocol has not released a post-mortem identifying the initial point of access, the specific credentials involved or whether one compromised account provided control over multiple wallets.
For now, Aquifer’s recovery process centers on its whitehat proposal. The attacker has been offered the right to retain up to 20% of the assets associated with the exploit if at least 80% is returned to the designated recovery addresses by Sept. 3 at 14:00 UTC.
