Blockaid flagged a $13.3M drain on the BTTC Bridge as an exploit, then retracted after Justin Sun confirmed it was part of the planned bridge shutdown.
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Blockchain security firm Blockaid pulled an exploit alert for the BitTorrent Chain (BTTC) Bridge after determining that a $13.3 million asset drain was part of an authorized internal shutdown operation.
The incident unfolded Tuesday when Blockaid's monitoring system flagged on-chain activity that looked like a classic bridge compromise. The firm initially warned of a potential exploit, citing roughly $13.3 million in assets withdrawn from the bridge's Ethereum predicate contracts. The haul included about 7,285 ETH and multiple ERC-20 tokens.
Blockaid's analysis showed the BTTC Bridge admin Safe had executed a privileged proxy upgrade. An address then received the CFO_ROLE on the upgraded RootChainManager and called the withdrawAll[address[]] function to drain the contracts. That sequence – a proxy upgrade followed by a privileged role assignment and a bulk withdrawal – matches the pattern seen in prior bridge exploits, which is why Blockaid classified it as a potential security incident.
Tron founder Justin Sun responded publicly within minutes. He said the BTTC team had completed the BTTC Bridge Sunset Program, and that the asset transfers were part of that internal operational process. All user funds remained safe, he added. Users could still deposit and withdraw bridged assets through partner centralized exchanges. Sun also said the BitTorrent team would shift its focus to decentralized AI initiatives and maintaining the BitTorrent protocol.
Blockaid then updated its assessment, stating the project team had approved the upgrade and asset transfers. The firm called it "part of internal operation, not an exploit."
The clarification lines up with BitTorrent's June 12 announcement of a phased bridge shutdown. The project said it would close deposits from June 13 and complete all bridge withdrawals by June 18. Users were told to migrate bridged assets back to their native blockchains before the deadline. BTTC's staking, validator operations, and broader network would remain unaffected.
The bridge's closure is part of a broader roadmap shift. BitTorrent is directing users toward centralized exchange infrastructure for future cross-chain transfers.
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