Allegations against Garden Finance of laundering funds stolen in the Bybit hack continue to gain traction following their recent activity report.
Garden Finance’s Q2 2025 Report
In its Q2 2025 report, Garden Finance highlighted significant transaction activity, processing nearly 24,984 BTC, worth over $1.5 billion, across 40,571 atomic swaps. The platform also earned 40.11 BTC in fees, with one manual swap reaching a volume of 10 BTC.
Despite attempts to showcase success, these figures attracted criticism. Blockchain researcher ZachXBT questioned the source of such high volumes and fees, claiming over 80% of the platform's earnings may have stemmed from laundering stolen assets.
Garden Finance’s Response to Allegations
In response, Garden Finance executive Jax Gulati referenced a prior update from Q4 2024, claiming the platform held only 30 BTC at the time of the Bybit hack and denied any centralization.
However, ZachXBT remained unconvinced, pointing to other hacks, like the one on WazirX, to indicate a pattern. He asserted that the same entity continued to use Garden Finance, raising concerns about tracking the platform's users.
Allegations of Illegal Profitability of Garden Finance
ZachXBT accused Garden Finance of profiting from illegal transactions, urging the team to return fees earned from such swaps and shut down large transaction features.
This sparked extensive debate within the decentralized finance (DeFi) community, as Bybit sought to reclaim over $90,000 in ETH paid by a hacker in swap fees. He also claimed that part of the revenue was utilized in earlier airdrop farming, a tactic some exploit to gain unfair advantages from new token releases.
Allegations against Garden Finance highlight critical issues of security and transparency within the decentralized finance sector. Further investigations may be necessary to uncover the true nature of the platform's operations.
