Secret Network proposes SCRT move to Arbitrum, token drops 24%

Secret Network proposed moving SCRT from Cosmos to Arbitrum, citing AI exploit risks that make old code cheaper to attack.

"The security risk is the part we take most seriously," the Secret Network team said in a governance forum post Tuesday. "Old code is becoming dramatically easier to analyze."

The proposal follows a $4.7 million exploit of the Axelar-Secret IBC bridge in June that drained bridged assets through an infinite mint bug. Secret Network's total value locked on Cosmos has dwindled to $1.3 million, according to DefiLlama, while Arbitrum holds $17.4 billion in total value secured, per L2Beat.

For SCRT to endure, it needs a new stable home, and the Ethereum ecosystem is that home, the team said. A one-time snapshot of SCRT balances is planned for Sept. 1, after which a new ERC-20 SCRT contract will be issued on Arbitrum, subject to a governance vote.

SCRT holders reacted negatively to the news, with the token falling 24 percent over the past 24 hours to $0.041, down more than 99 percent from its 2021 peak, according to CoinGecko.

The team cited the release of advanced AI models such as Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 as dramatically increasing the capabilities for discovering and exploiting code vulnerabilities. "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," the team said.

Secret is not the only network to leave Cosmos. Privacy-focused blockchain NilChain left the ecosystem in February, Sei Network completed a full Cosmos-to-EVM transition in June, and stablecoin blockchain Noble announced its departure in January. The Cosmos ecosystem's total value locked stands at about $2 billion, down 88 percent from its 2021 peak.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.