There’s been some confusion around the Secret Network incident, so we want to clarify: neither Axelar nor IBC was compromised. The exploited token smart contract was not developed, deployed, or maintained by Axelar. Axelar’s firewalling prevented the impact from spreading to other chains.
The exploited contract was a fork of the CW20-ICS20 implementation with two core security checks commented out that enabled an “infinite mint” bug. By removing checks designed to prevent this class of issue, the fork changed the contract’s trust model without undergoing a new audit.
Anyone can deploy contracts that wrap assets from other chains over IBC. The same contract pattern is also used to wrap tokens from other chains to Secret, but this deployment was vulnerable because its Secret-side fork had core security checks removed. The issue was not Axelar-specific logic or a flaw in IBC itself.
For more details, check out the full incident analysis: https://t.co/KSNimxTc2z
Secret Network incident analysis by @CommonPrefix. Axelar's protocol was not compromised and prevented contagion from spreading to other chains. Here's the full report: https://t.co/u7izAFQu7I
We analyzed the Secret Network incident. An attacker exploited an infinite-mint bug in a modified CW20-ICS20 token contract on Secret to drain ≈$4.67M. The attacker minted arbitrary Secret-wrapped Axelar assets on Secret by spinning up a new Cosmos chain with 1 validator and self-relaying IBC packets to it. The contract did not validate which IBC channel inbound tokens came from. The attacker exited via the Axelar bridge. Axelar's protocol was not compromised and prevented contagion from spreading to other chains. Here's our full analysis: https://t.co/l7evjS5PsN
Solana is now live on Axelar Mainnet.
The integration enables cross-chain messaging and asset transfers between @Solana and Axelar-supported ecosystems.
Read more: https://t.co/MjLtrDfiNP
As part of our 2026 roadmap, we’ve outlined plans to co-stake with blue chip assets to strengthen the Axelar Network’s economic security.
What could it mean if assets like XRP enter the picture?
Thrilled to finally share what we have been working on with @ja_akinyele, @v_tumas, and the @RippleXDev team:
We documented XRPL's Payment Engine by producing the first comprehensive specification of the system. While the Payment Engine implements sophisticated logic for path finding, payment execution, and multi-currency support, this complexity had not been previously captured in formal documentation. Our work provided Ripple's developers and other stakeholders with a clear, shared reference, resolving a long-standing challenge in understanding and safely extending the codebase.
This is just the beginning. We have laid the foundations towards formal verification of the Payment Engine, then Consenus, and eventually all critical components of `xrpld`. Excited to continue collaborating with Ripple in the years to come.
https://t.co/IqwA1TlzFF
Common Prefix is taking the lead stewardship role of Axelar. We are excited to share our plans for 2026, with more details to be announced in Q1.
Our team consists of scientists–professors, PhDs, and post-docs–from world-renowned universities like Stanford, Imperial, ETH Zürich, and University of Edinburgh. But also senior engineers with decades of experience in hedge funds, TradFi, and Web3. We bridge the gap between science and engineering.
We are razor-sharp focused on institutional adoption. For this, we will double down on the ecosystems that matter like XRPL, Sui, Solana, Ethereum, Stellar, and Hyperliquid. We will make sure that supported connections bring value to the ecosystem, and the right incentives for validators.
For institutional, we need increased economic security. We’ll enable co-staking of blue chip tokens beyond just AXL. Privacy, compliance, and robustness will also be a theme for the year.
For bridging, we will remove friction of moving assets from chain to chain by introducing gasless bridging. Subsidies will come from investing capital locked in gateway contracts, creating novel asset classes. Users will always have the choice to act according to their risk appetite.
Lastly, we’re building up-the-stack in select key verticals: stablecoins, tokenized deposits, yield, and lending. A fusion of new chains creates an opportunity for new emerging asset classes.
We have entered into an agreement to bring the @interop_labs team – initial developers of @axelar, a leading interoperability stack – into Circle to accelerate the next chapter of multichain infrastructure with @Arc and CCTP, and we are excited to welcome new team members to the Circle family as soon as the deal closes.
The Axelar Network, Foundation and AXL token are not part of this acquisition and will continue to operate independently under community governance, with @CommonPrefix leading network development.
More here: https://t.co/0CF0sJkUZ9
We’re excited to introduce Honest Majority, a new podcast by Common Prefix. Episode 1 with @baincapcrypto partner @alexhevans is now live: Can Data Availability be Zero Knowledge? 1/4
Everything runs on ledgers — from banks and governments to entire economies. Blockchains can transform them into a global, scientific system of trust. Watch @dionyziz keynote “The Vision of Blockchain” (Panathenea 2025, Athens). 1/3
Proving an Ethereum PoS block's ancestry is hard. Verifying predecessor blocks without downloading all of Ethereum's ~200MB Beacon state is far from trivial. Inspired by @lodestar_eth's proving API, we built a Rust library that simplifies proving the lineage between two beacon blocks: https://t.co/2aaVy18DKZ
We're looking to onboard Senior Software Engineers with blockchain experience: https://t.co/a2oMwUbzdH
If you think you're a good fit, please email your CV, GitHub handle, and transcript (if you graduated within the past 5 years) to [email protected].
Our team will be flying over to Brussels to attend @EthCC and @modular_summit, coming up in a few days. DM us if you'll be there and would like to talk!
PoW vs PoS: Can wealth truly replace work in securing blockchains? Let's dive into why Proof-of-Work may be the key to more robust and secure blockchain systems. 1/5
In the past year, we've collaborated with @babylon_chain on their mission to bring Bitcoin Staking to the world: stake your bitcoins right from the Bitcoin chain and help secure the Cosmos ecosystem! 🧵 1/4