Garden Finance is facing growing pressure after a series of accusations tied to suspicious crypto activities surfaced online. According to blockchain investigator ZachXBT, the platform has played a key role in laundering stolen assets connected to the $1.4 billion Bybit hack.
The platform had recently showcased its performance through Dune Analytics charts, reporting 24,984 BTC swapped in Q2 2025. This number corresponds to more than the 1.5 billion in volume exchanged in 40 571 atomic swaps. Garden Finance deftly earned 40.11 BTC in fees during the month as well, with one manual swap reaching 10 BTC in volume.
Although these figures are reported as a display of success, they were questioned by ZachXBT due to their validity. He explained that the circulation of illegal money could have produced more than 80 percent of these fees. Laundering, he alleges, was done by Chinese agents affiliated to the North Korean Lazarus Group.
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Jax Gulati, the lead of Garden Finance, addressed the accusations by citing a previous office update in Q4 2024. He said that the platform was holding 30 BTC when the Bybit hack occurred. Gulati also ruled out the implication that Garden Finance is a centralized or fake decentralized bridge.
Nevertheless, ZachXBT accused the explanation and mentioned other similar hacks, such as one on WazirX. He was compelling that there exists some pattern of behavior indicating that the same players were using it and still using Garden Finance as a medium of laundering.
Single Liquidity Source Raises Fresh Centralization Concerns
Adding to the debate, user James Scaur commented on the liquidity flow within the protocol. He proposed that a Pareto distribution could explain why one major liquidity provider appeared dominant. According to him, this does not necessarily prove centralization.
ZachXBT responded that one player had been constantly transacting the huge swaps since the cap was increased to 10 cbBTC. He accused this exchange of injecting multiple rounds of cbBTC liquidity via Coinbase on multiple occasions and making Bybit-related funds move.
He continued that after April 2025, the majority of swaps on the site could be ascribed to the same organization. This, according to him, simplified the detection of malicious transactions and indicated that the team ought to have done it earlier.
ZachXBT also blamed Garden Finance for its insistence on profiting from such transactions through fees. He asked the team to reimburse those profits and deactivate big swaps. Moreover, he argued that a part of the stated revenue was used in a former airdrop farming activity.
Conclusion
With the accusations gaining traction, the platform is now under intense scrutiny. The outcome may influence wider conversations about the responsibilities of decentralized platforms and their role in the illicit crypto movement.
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