Secret Network cites AI exploit risks in migration from Cosmos to Arbitrum

What happened

Secret Network proposed migrating its SCRT token from the Cosmos blockchain to Ethereum's Arbitrum layer-2, citing security risks from artificial intelligence and aging code vulnerabilities.

The team stated that 'old code is becoming dramatically easier to analyze' and that 'with AI, the cost of attacking stale code is falling across the board.' The proposal followed a June 2026 exploit of the Axelar-Secret IBC bridge that drained $4.7 million through an infinite mint vulnerability.

Reported impact

Secret Network identified growing security risk from aging, under-maintained code that AI-assisted exploitation is making worse. The team argued that advanced AI models such as Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 have dramatically increased capabilities for discovering and potentially exploiting code vulnerabilities.

Index analysis

The incident reflects vulnerability of legacy blockchain integration code to AI-powered vulnerability discovery tools. The team noted that 'attacks that used to take deep manual effort are getting cheaper as models get better at reading contracts, tracing assumptions, and turning a forgotten edge case into a working exploit.'

Governance controls

The migration proposal requires a governance vote. A snapshot of SCRT balances scheduled for September 1, 2026 will determine eligibility for token conversion to a new ERC-20 version on Arbitrum, with only native and staked SCRT held in self-custodied wallets qualifying for conversion.

Classification

Organizations

SCRT Labs (subject), Secret Network (subject), Axelar (mentioned)

Category

Security and cyberattacks

Industry

Financial and insurance services

Country

United States

Harm status

Actual harm

Intent

Unintentional

Timing

Post-deployment

Harm types

Economic or property

Harmed

Consumers

Failure modes

Hallucination

AI systems

Mythos 5

Sources and evidence