Arbitrum DAO Issues Urgent Alert as Official X Governance Account Gets Hacked

Another day, another crypto governance platform gets breached—this time, it's Arbitrum's turn. The DAO's official X account for governance proposals got compromised, sending the community scrambling.

The Immediate Fallout

Arbitrum's team moved fast, warning users not to interact with any links or announcements from the account. The hack highlights a persistent weak spot: social media remains a prime attack vector, even for multi-billion-dollar ecosystems. No funds were reportedly drained from the treasury—this time—but the reputational damage and phishing risks are immediate.

Governance in the Crosshairs

Attacks on official communication channels aren't new, but targeting a governance account is a strategic escalation. It undermines community coordination and trust—the very pillars of decentralized decision-making. It's a stark reminder that code can be bulletproof, but human-operated social accounts are often the lowest-hanging fruit.

Security Theater or Wake-Up Call?

The incident sparks the usual debates about multi-sig controls for socials, hardware security modules, and whether any Web3 project should rely on a centralized platform like X for critical announcements. Yet, here we are—again. Maybe the real vulnerability isn't the tech stack, but the industry's addiction to viral marketing on inherently insecure platforms. After all, what's a little security risk compared to the dopamine hit of engagement metrics?

This breach cuts through the usual decentralization hype, exposing a centralized point of failure that no smart contract can fix. Until projects treat their social accounts with the same rigor as their private keys, these warnings will keep coming—right before the next 'official' post shills a malicious link.

Hackers announce a fake airdrop

Hackers started by promoting a narrative around potential usage-based rewards and airdrops, framing past activity such as bridging, swapping, liquidity provision, and governance participation as qualifying behavior. 

The posts emphasized “real users,” snapshots, and weighted allocations. They appeared designed to create anticipation and credibility during the breach.

“If you were consistently active, this is the moment you were playing for. Arbitrum isn’t rewarding wallets — it’s rewarding behavior. And if this follows the pattern of previous major airdrops, allocations won’t be flat,” the scammers wrote.

The compromised account then posted a fake “Arbitrum snapshot confirmed” airdrop. Hackers have created an image banner and a LINK to gov-arbitrum.com, a non-official site that features a suspicious “Connect Wallet” prompt designed to steal credentials.

This mirrors the 2023 Arbitrum airdrop phishing waves. However, the attacks three years ago succeeded because there was a real and widely publicized airdrop event that scammers could piggyback on. They created fake claim sites and spam accounts that tricked users into authorizing wallet access. 

The attack resulted in actual financial losses for users who clicked phishing links. This compromise is still in the early stages with no reported losses. Users have shown mixed reactions, with some grateful for the quick alert while others blamed the platform for the attacks.

This compromise follows an attack on Arbitrum’s projects. As reported by Cryptopolitan, two Arbitrum projects launched by the same deployer suffered unauthorized withdrawals for an estimated $1.5M. The attacker gained admin access and replaced smart contracts with malicious versions. 

Besides Arbitrum, the official X account for CZ’s BNB Chain, with millions of followers, was compromised and used to post phishing links promoting a fake “BNB HODLer Airdrop. Users were tricked into potentially connecting their wallets to malicious sites before the team regained control and warned followers to avoid connecting wallets to unknown links.

Arbitrum’s native coin declines 19% as the users’ sentiment turns cold

Arbitrum’s native coin is down 1% in the 24 hours, extending to the week’s 19% decline. However, its network is still doing great, completing millions of transactions and keeping TVL at approximately $2.8 billion as of early 2026, according to one study. Other estimates suggest higher figures, such as $16 billion at its peak. 

However, ARB’s price is still tied to Ethereum’s performance, the evolution of the Layer-2 sector, and ongoing supply pressures from token unlocks.

Token unlocks have been a big problem. Every month, regular releases increase the supply equal to 1.5–2% of the circulating tokens. For example, in January 2026, 96 million ARB were worth approximately $19.6 million at the time of release. These unlocks, which will last until about March 2027, keep selling pressure high, which cancels out use gains.

Weekly AMA Lineup 🎙️

We’re catching up this week with the communities behind @arbitrum_cn and @Aptos_Africa to unpack how their ecosystems are evolving.

1. Aptos 🌐

Join us for a chat with the @Aptos_Africa community as we dive into how they're building fast, affordable, and… pic.twitter.com/CoR5v0N9oc

— PancakeSwap (@PancakeSwap) February 2, 2026

Arbitrum is scheduled to take part in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on X on February 5. The event will feature members of the Arbitrum community team and provide an opportunity for users and observers to hear directly from ecosystem representatives about recent developments, current projects. This is an effort to change its users’ sentiments.

Meanwhile, ARB is trading at roughly $0.1358, a big drop from its March 2023 launch price of about $1.20 and its peak price of $2.39 soon after.

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