The exploiter who drained Ostium, a real-world-asset perpetuals protocol on Arbitrum, has started moving the stolen funds. On Thursday, blockchain security firm PeckShield reported that 10,540 ETH — worth roughly $24 million at the time of the heist — was sent into Tornado Cash. The mixer is a favorite tool for laundering crypto, and its use here signals the attacker is trying to obscure the trail.
The movement
PeckShield flagged the transaction on Thursday. The 10,540 ETH went directly from the exploiter's wallet to Tornado Cash. That's a significant chunk of the haul. The original exploit targeted Ostium's public OLP vault, which held about $24 million in USDC. The attacker apparently converted the USDC to ETH before moving it into the mixer.
What was taken
Ostium is a real-world-asset perpetuals protocol built on Arbitrum. The OLP vault — the protocol's liquidity pool — was drained of roughly $24 million in USDC. That's the entire amount reported by PeckShield. No other vaults or contracts appear to have been affected, though the team hasn't released a full post-mortem yet.
Ostium's position
The protocol hasn't publicly commented on the exploit as of Friday morning. Users are waiting for an update on whether any recovery is possible. The funds are now in Tornado Cash, which makes tracing harder but not impossible — law enforcement and analytics firms have tracked mixer transactions before. For now, the stolen ETH sits in the privacy pool, and the clock is ticking for any chance of recovery.
