Aftermath Finance, a popular decentralized perpetuals trading platform on the Sui Network, has suffered a security exploit. The team officially confirmed that an attacker drained approximately $1.14 million USDC from the AftermathFi Perpetuals protocol. The incident took place across roughly 11 transactions in a short time frame of about 36 minutes. The AftermathFi team stated that the exploit was not in the core Perps smart contract itself. Instead, it stemmed from a logic flaw where the protocol wrongly allowed negative builder code fees to be set. This bug enabled the attacker to artificially inflate synthetic collateral and withdraw excess funds from the protocol’s vaults.
Attention Aftermath community – We’ve identified an exploit affecting the protocol.
Our team is actively investigating alongside leading security partners. As a precaution, the protocol has been paused and measures are being taken to minimize potential impact to user funds.…
— Aftermath Finance (🥚, 🥚) (@AftermathFi) April 29, 2026
In their first public statement, the team revealed that they had detected an exploit impacting the protocol and are currently investigating the issue. As a precautionary step, they have paused the protocol and are taking actions to reduce any potential risk to user funds. They also clarified that the incident is limited to the Perps product, while other offerings including swaps, staking, and MEV infrastructure remain unaffected and secure.
Later updates from the team mentioned that the Perps protocol has been paused, and the total damage stands at $1.14 million. They further added that they “are now focused on recovery.”
The attacker’s address shared by the team is: 0x1a65086c85114c1a3f8dc74140115c6e18438d48d33a21fd112311561112d41e
Prior to the exploit, AftermathFi had posted that roughly 1 in every 8 transactions on the Sui Network involved Aftermath Perps, and the protocol accounted for nearly 12% of total gas usage on the chain. Because of this incident, trading volume and open interest in Aftermath’s perpetuals markets are expected to see a temporary decline, along with short-term impact on user confidence in the protocol.
This event highlights the risks involved in complex fee accounting mechanisms in DeFi perpetuals platforms, especially when negative fee logic is allowed without strict controls. Users who had open positions in Aftermath Perps are advised to check their wallet activity and closely follow official updates from the team regarding recovery progress.
