Blockchain researcher ZachXBT has accused Garden Finance of helping to launder funds stolen in the massive $1.4 billion Bybit hack. The decentralized crypto swapping platform recently reported strong growth numbers. However, critics believe much of that activity may involve suspicious or criminal transactions. Garden Reports Busy Activity in Q2 2025 In its Q2 2025 report, Garden Finance shared data from Dune Analytics showing high transaction activity. The platform handled nearly 24,984 Bitcoin (BTC) in swaps, worth over $1.5 billion, across 40,571 atomic swaps. It also earned 40.11 BTC in fees, with one manual swap reaching a volume of 10 BTC. While these numbers were meant to highlight success, they quickly drew criticism. ZachXBT questioned the source of these high volumes and fees. He claimed over 80% of the platform’s earnings may have come from laundering stolen assets. He said Chinese agents linked to the North Korean Lazarus Group used Garden Finance to move the stolen funds. Garden Finance Response Stirred Controversy In response, Garden Finance executive Jax Gulati pointed to a past update from Q4 2024. He said the platform held only 30 BTC at the time of the Bybit hack and denied that it was centralized or pretending to be decentralized. Nevertheless, ZachXBT was not convinced. He mentioned other hacks, like the one on WazirX, to show a pattern. He claimed the same group kept using Garden Finance, raising concerns about who uses the platform and how it is being monitored. Further fueling the debate, a user named James Scaur commented on the nature of liquidity flow on Garden Finance. He said the reason one user seemed to control most of the liquidity could be explained by a Pareto distribution, which often happens in financial systems. According to him, this did not mean the platform was centralized. However, ZachXBT disagreed. He said one user had been making large swaps since the limit was raised to 10 cbBTC. He claimed this person added cbBTC through Coinbase and moved money linked to the Bybit hack. By April 2025, ZachXBT said most of the swaps on the platform were connected to this same group, which made the suspicious activity easier to spot. He questioned why the team at Garden Finance had not acted sooner. Garden Finance Allegedly Profits From Illegal Transactions ZachXBT accused Garden Finance of profiting from these illegal transactions. He said the team should return the fees earned from such swaps and shut down large transaction features. This has caused a big debate in the decentralized finance (DeFi). Similarly, Bybit asked ParaSwap DAO to return over $90,000 in ETH paid by a hacker in swap fees. He also claimed that part of the revenue was used in earlier airdrop farming, a strategy some use to unfairly benefit from new token releases. The post Garden Finance Accused of Aiding $1.4B Crypto Laundering Scheme appeared first on TheCoinrise.com .
