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Garden

avoid.net/garden→14/100·100% conf.
[AI-DRAFTED · AWAITING VERIFICATION][src:defillama]

Auto-generated score, not yet verified against the scoring model. Under review — treat as indicative, not a verdict.

anchored·2Vzre7…dtDR

Summary

Garden Finance (garden.finance) is a Bitcoin cross-chain bridge and swap protocol launched in December 2023 by former Ren Protocol core team members, using Hashed Timelock Contracts (HTLCs) and an intents-based solver network to enable non-custodial Bitcoin swaps across chains. In October 2025, a compromised solver operator lost approximately $11.4 million in a security incident attributed by forensic investigators to a North Korea-linked threat actor. Prior to the exploit, blockchain investigator ZachXBT alleged that a substantial portion of Garden's volume — with estimates ranging from 25% to over 75% — originated from illicit sources including funds stolen in the $1.46 billion Bybit hack by Lazarus Group, allegations the team disputed but did not fully refute.

Connected Entities

9 entities · 60 linked investigations
Organizations
□Bybit72□Ethereum64□Arbitrum52□North Korea Lazarus Group — H1 2026 Systematic Crypto Theft Campaign0□Garden□ZachXBT82□Sapphire Sleet / UNC10692
Protocols
⌂Garden Finance14
Tokens
♦Bitcoin62
Relationships
  • Ethereum→mentioned with→Bitcoin(60%)
  • ZachXBT→mentioned with→Ethereum(70%)
  • ZachXBT→mentioned with→Bitcoin(65%)
  • ZachXBT→mentioned with→Bybit(70%)
  • Garden Finance→mentioned with→Arbitrum(70%)
  • Garden Finance→mentioned with→Bitcoin(80%)
  • Garden Finance→mentioned with→ZachXBT(70%)
  • Garden Finance→mentioned with→Bybit(70%)
  • Garden Finance→mentioned with→Garden(70%)
  • Garden Finance→mentioned with→Ethereum(70%)
  • + 20 more
Also appears in
Sapphire Sleet / UNC1069·2Bitcoin·62North Korea Lazarus Group — H1 2026 Systematic Crypto Theft Campaign·0Bybit·72Arbitrum·52Ethereum·64Lendf.me·30Levyathan·18Jump Trading·42StableMagnet·2+ 50 more

Connected Through

9 shared actors · 634 investigations

Distinct actors this investigation shares with others — holders, traders, and named parties. Shared infrastructure (exchanges, pools) is excluded.

Have evidence about Garden?

Timeline(10 events)

2017

Republic Protocol (later Ren Protocol), predecessor project to Garden Finance, founded in Australia by Taiyang Zhang, Loong Wang, and Jaz Gulati.

November 2022

FTX, which had acquired Ren Labs, files for bankruptcy. Ren Protocol collapses, prompting Gulati and Nadimpalli to begin work on Garden Finance.

December 2023

Garden Finance publicly launches as a Bitcoin cross-chain bridge using HTLC atomic swaps and an intents-based solver network.

18 January 2024

SEED governance token launches with a total supply of 147 million tokens. Team and investor allocations subject to 24-month cliff from TGE.

21 February 2025

Bybit exchange suffers a $1.46 billion hack attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group. ZachXBT later alleges $160 million of these stolen funds transited Garden within 48 hours.

21 June 2025

ZachXBT publicly alleges that more than 80% of Garden Finance's recent fee income was generated from facilitating movement of Lazarus Group-linked Bybit stolen funds. Garden co-founder Jaz Gulati disputes the characterization.

July 2025

ZachXBT publishes a broader analysis alleging 25% or more of Garden's total historical volume is linked to stolen assets, with six-figure profits from illicit flows between April and July 2025.

30 October 2025

Security breach: an attacker gains unauthorized access to the private key infrastructure of a major Garden solver operator and drains approximately $11.4 million in WBTC, USDC, USDT, and ETH across multiple chains. Garden temporarily shuts down its app.

31 October 2025

Garden co-founder Jaz Gulati states user funds are safe and the protocol remains unaffected. Garden offers a 10% whitehat bounty (~$1.1M) for fund return and exploit disclosure. ZachXBT alleges the compromised solver was operated by a Garden team member based on on-chain evidence from a deployer address.

29 January 2026

Garden publishes forensic findings from Ernst and Young and zeroShadow, confirming unauthorized server access from IP addresses located in Japan and China on October 30, 2025, with the compromise attributed to a leaked private key on a compromised device. The attacker is linked to North Korea-affiliated threat actor DangerousPassword (also known as CryptoCore / Sapphire Sleet / UNC1069). No funds recovered.

Provenance & Audit Trail
Anchored on SolanaVerify on-chain11 Wayback Archivessrc:defillama

Decision Log

This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain (1 event). 11 of 14 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.

full audit log →version history →

model: claude-sonnet-4-6

generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:20 AM

last updated: 8/30/2026, 12:05:00 PM

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