Iron Fish has withdrawn all remaining developer support after uncovering a long‑standing inflation bug that allowed an attacker to repeatedly double‑spend shielded funds and cash out through the ChainPort bridge. What happened - The team’s probe began after it noticed unusual activity involving the wrapped token wIRON and the ChainPort bridge. Logs shared with ChainPort led developers back to Iron Fish’s own blockchain code. - Iron Fish traced the issue to a code commit from early 2019 that implemented a standard Merkle tree. A subtle interaction between that implementation and the way a note’s nullifier is computed—the mechanism used to prevent re‑spending of shielded notes—meant an attacker could spend the same note multiple times. The attacker reportedly aggregated the duplicated notes and moved funds out via ChainPort. Scope, disclosure and remediation - The project did not disclose how much new currency was created by the exploit, how much value was withdrawn through the bridge, or whether there will be compensation for affected holders. - Developers said the vulnerable code path had been within the scope of both external and internal audits, but reviewers missed the bug. The team committed a patch and published a detailed post‑mortem in the associated pull request, then shut down and archived the repository as part of ending support. - Iron Fish’s announcement clarified that ending developer support does not automatically stop independently operated nodes from running; it specifically withdraws remaining developer support for the network. Market reaction - Traders AzFlin and Abu posted screenshots showing the displayed market capitalization of wIRON on Base and Aerodrome collapsing—from a reported figure of roughly $200 million down to a few thousand dollars in one screenshot. Liquidity on the wIRON/USDC pair was shown as extremely low. - Those screenshots reflect the wrapped token’s trading‑pair valuations and do not prove a particular dollar amount was stolen. Iron Fish has not provided a loss estimate. Context and security history - Iron Fish’s team was integrated into Base in March 2025, with Coinbase saying the acquisition would support private‑transaction work and privacy infrastructure using zero‑knowledge proofs. The project had used ChainPort to connect with other chains. - The protocol has undergone prior security reviews. Inversed Tech audited the core protocol (finalized June 1, 2023), flagging 37 findings including three critical issues and one warning; Iron Fish said those were addressed and rechecked. A pre‑mainnet critical bug involving asset‑ID malleability was fixed before the network launched on April 20, 2023. - Trail of Bits performed a seven‑day review of the FishHash mining algorithm and its Rust and C++ implementations in January 2024, focusing on mining performance and resistance to specialized hardware. Role of ChainPort - ChainPort had previously been listed by the Iron Fish Foundation as more than a simple bridge: an August 2024 security notice said ChainPort conducted address screening (including checks against OFAC lists), could freeze tokens linked to suspicious activity, and had the ability to freeze or burn funds it determined to be malicious. The extent to which those mechanisms were used in this incident was not detailed. What’s next - The community is left without developer support and without a clear accounting of financial losses. Iron Fish’s published patch and post‑mortem provide technical details, but holders and counterparties are still waiting for clarity on the economic impact and any remediation or recovery plans. Read more AI-generated news on: https://app.chaingpt.org/news