Secret Network is weighing a dramatic shift off Cosmos and onto Ethereum’s Arbitrum after a recent bridge exploit exposed what the team calls “dangerously stale” infrastructure and thinning ecosystem support.
In a July 7 governance post, Secret proposed minting a new ERC‑20 SCRT token on Arbitrum using a one‑time snapshot scheduled for Sept. 1. Only native SCRT and staked SCRT balances would be eligible for the snapshot; sSCRT, bridged SCRT, contract‑held tokens and assets held via IBC would be excluded. The plan still requires a community vote — migration will not move forward without holder approval.
Security is the proposal’s headline justification. Secret pointed to the Axelar–Secret IBC bridge exploit that resulted in roughly $4.7 million in bridged assets being stolen and prompted Axelar to disable Secret bridge routes. The team emphasized the exploit did not affect native SCRT, Secret’s privacy protocol, or its confidential compute model, but said the incident underscored the risks of legacy bridge paths and under‑maintained code in a smaller ecosystem. Secret also warned that advances in AI are lowering the cost of attacking stale code, making timely maintenance more critical.
Beyond security, Secret cited weaker liquidity and fewer builders remaining on Cosmos as drivers for the potential migration. When Secret launched in 2020, the appchain/IBC momentum made Cosmos a natural home. The landscape has shifted, the team says — and public signs back that up. DefiLlama lists Secret’s DeFi TVL at roughly $1.32 million, while total TVL across Cosmos chains is about $2 billion. By contrast, L2Beat shows Arbitrum One securing about $17.4 billion, making it the largest Ethereum scaling network by TVL.
Earlier this year Anoma co‑founder Christopher Goes warned Cosmos was under stress, noting projects like Penumbra, Osmosis and Noble had scaled back, explored exits or reallocated resources — context Secret cites in its rationale.
If the proposal passes, SCRT Labs says it will end official support for the Cosmos‑based Secret L1 on Sept. 1. The legacy chain could continue to produce blocks only if enough validators and third‑party operators keep running it. Other planned changes include releasing Secret’s source code under a permissive open‑source license and cutting token inflation from 9% to 5% post‑migration, while preserving SCRT as the governance token.
The proposal asks holders to prepare: convert eligible balances to native or staked SCRT and move IBC assets back to their home chains ahead of the Sept. 1 snapshot. The community reaction has been negative so far — CoinGecko showed SCRT trading around $0.041, down roughly 25% in 24 hours and still more than 99% below its 2021 peak.
The governance vote will determine whether Secret attempts a high‑stakes move to Arbitrum or stays on Cosmos and doubles down on securing its existing infrastructure.
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