$5.5M Garden Finance Hack Turns Darker: Team Silent and Bounty Offered

What if the bridge that was built to make crypto transfers faster became the biggest crypto scam of 2025? That is what people are asking after the shocking Garden Finance Hack, which has shaken the trust of users around the world.

As per WuBlockchain , it is working across many blockchains, and was hacked for about $5.5 million, and later the total loss reached over $10.8 million.

The hacker used the wallet address

• 0x98BCc6c34A489CEfdD9DfA8d792CFEFb02Ea2D12

• WZy4xxpqktWa1b6MPMRiWsD487CT8mDcapB6GufBJCH

The official team didn’t post any comment, they only sent an on-chain message to the hacker, offering a 10% whitehat bounty if the money was returned, and this made Garden Finance Hacked news much more interesting.

Source: ZachXBT

But this scam may not be just a one-time incident. Many reports say it may have revealed a bigger problem, stolen crypto being washed through this platform.

From Ren Protocol To Garden Finance Hack : Ghost Returns?

To understand the Garden Finance $5.5M Hack, we need to go back to the start of how it emerged and its link with Ren Protocol laundering.

• In 2017, the project started as Republic Protocol, created by Taiyang Zhang, Loong Wang, and Jaz Gulati.

• It raised $67 million and later changed its name to Ren Protocol, which handled more than $13 billion in Bitcoin transfers during the DeFi boom.

• In 2021, Alameda Research, the company related to FTX, bought Ren for $700K per quarter, and became part of the Solana network, but after FTX collapsed , it also shut down leaving users’ $12 million BTC stuck.

• Then in 2023, former Ren developers launched Garden Finance, calling it a faster version.

• But two years later, the Garden Finance Hack made people question if this “new version” had the same old problems.

This latest crypto hack of 2025 is creating panic in the industry and the project's legitimacy is being questioned all around.

ZachXBT Investigation: The “Money Washing Machines” of DeFi

The current investigation shows the multichain $10.8M exploit might be part of a much bigger story.

• Ren and Garden together are linked to over $540 million in stolen or illegal money.

• More than 25 crypto breaches used these bridges to turn stolen ETH into BTC.

• About 75% of the platform's total volume came from stolen funds, ZachXBT said.

He called both projects “money washing machines.” The method was clear: ETH stolen - swapped to BTC - mixed through cbBTC - moved to Solana for exit.

The Silence That Screams: Whitehat Bounties and Missing Answers

Normally, when a crypto project is hacked, the team gives quick updates. But in this case, there was no public statement, only a whitehat bounty offer for 10% of the funds. A few days before this, ZachXBT had already said that victims were ignored asking for refunds.

People saw that all freezable assets were swapped immediately, which made it almost impossible to recover the stolen money. Now while Garden Finance news continues to spread, one big question remains: When does innovation in crypto turn into crime?

Conclusion

The Garden Finance Hack is more than just another crypto exploit — it’s a strong warning for the whole DeFi world. It shows how fast a project can move from trust to doubt, from innovation to investigation.

If the team doesn’t respond soon, then the coming update might not be about fixing things, but about facing regulators. For now, this project stands as a reminder that in cryptocurrency, not everything that grows is good.

Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only, always do your own research, take experts help, and analyze the project well before making any investment decision in the cryptocurrency.