Fake GIWA Mainnet Drains 766 ETH Through Fraudulent Bridge
A counterfeit Layer 2 environment used GIWA’s real chain ID to make a fake network appear legitimate, exposing a deeper weakness in how users verify blockchain infrastructure.
W3 Meteor ID: GIWA-9282026-0622
Date & Time: September 27–28, 2026; the fraudulent network was deployed September 27 at 02:10:59 UTC+8, with the incident and investigation developing through September 28.
Origin: A fraudulent network impersonating GIWA Chain 9134 was created with a bridge and batcher resembling an OP Stack-based Layer 2. GIWA says its actual mainnet had not launched, while DYORSWAP says the counterfeit environment was used to move real ETH.
Visibility: The incident affected approximately 1,335 addresses that bridged about 767.65 ETH into the counterfeit network; roughly 766.25 ETH was subsequently removed. DYORSWAP says it has distributed more than 200 ETH from its own funds to affected users.
Trajectory: The attack did not begin with a conventional smart-contract exploit. The counterfeit chain used GIWA’s legitimate chain ID 9134, operated as a functioning-looking L2, and presented bridge infrastructure that users and applications could mistake for the real network. Once deposits accumulated, approximately 766.25 ETH was transferred out through the fraudulent bridge.
Direction: The immediate direction is toward forensic investigation and reimbursement, but the broader direction is harder to ignore: blockchain users may need to authenticate not only contracts and wallets, but the identity of the network itself. GIWA has warned users to avoid unofficial RPCs, bridges and contracts while investigators trace the infrastructure and fund flows.
Speed: The event developed remarkably quickly once the counterfeit environment was operational. According to DYORSWAP’s reconstruction, the bridge received three deposits totaling 0.4 ETH within 39 blocks of going live, while the fake L2 subsequently operated normally enough to submit transaction batches to Ethereum.
The response is also accelerating: GIWA issued a warning, DYORSWAP began tracing the infrastructure and funds, and the DEX says more than 200 ETH has already been returned to affected users.
Magnitude: The reported loss is substantial, but the more consequential measurement is the trust failure behind it. This was not simply a compromised contract: a counterfeit blockchain environment reportedly persuaded users to treat the wrong network as the right one, turning familiar infrastructure signals—including the legitimate chain ID—into part of the deception.
Altitude: The consequences could extend beyond GIWA and DYORSWAP to wallets, bridges, RPC providers, rollup developers and users operating across multiple chains. If chain identity itself becomes an attack surface, multichain security may increasingly depend on proving which network users are actually connected to, not merely whether the transaction they sign is valid.
Cock-a-Doodle-Doo: A blockchain can be technically real and still be the wrong blockchain. That is the uncomfortable lesson here: in a multichain world, “verify before you bridge” may need to become as fundamental as “verify before you sign.” The next generation of Web3 security may have to authenticate context, not just code.
