In light of the recent hack on the major decentralized Ethereum exchange, Curve Finance, along with MetronomeDAO and Alchemix Finance, decided to take some creative steps to recover stolen funds. In an on-chain public announcement sent out Thursday, the DeFi teams offered a 10% reward to the hacker for returning the stolen assets.
Opportunity for hackers
Reaching an agreement was not easy, but there is a high probability that it will be successful. Although the loss of $52 million was severe, representatives of Curve Finance, MetronomeDAO and Alchemix decided to take a chance by offering a reward to hackers who agree to return the funds. The time for the decision has been made clear and is August 6, 8:00 UTC.
“We are ready to cooperate, but if the hackers reject our proposal, we will be forced to take legal action to recover these funds,” representatives of the DeFi teams stated firmly.
First reactions
The announcement had a domino effect, causing the first outside information to emerge. One of the audit teams, PeckShield, reported the identification of one of the exploits. The hacker, who in this case may or may not be a “White Hat,” i.e., someone who invents vulnerabilities in protocols in order to steal funds, only to give them away later, returned nearly $5.4 million. The other hackers, at the time of writing this content, have not yet taken any action.
All these events led to a unique collaboration on the Twitter platform. ZachXBT, a pseudonymous on-chain investigator, actively collaborated with the JPEG’d team to track down the attacker. He also encouraged Michael Razoumovitch, the potential owner of the email address associated with the hack, to get in touch. The response was interesting – Razoumovitch admitted that although he owned the address, he hadn’t used it in a long time.
The Curve Finance attack in a nutshell
Many people are watching this unusual investigation, and the DeFi community is keeping its fingers crossed for success. The situation is causing heated discussions in the cryptocurrency community around the world, and the idea of rewarding a hacker for honesty seems controversial.
The hack took place on July 30 on Ethereum’s main decentralized exchange, known as Curve Finance. The incident resulted in the loss of some $52 million in various tokens. Three pools of ETH derivatives from MetronomeDAO, Alchemix Finance and JPEG’d experienced the loss.
In order to recover the stolen funds and return security to users, representatives of Curve Finance, MetronomeDAO and Alchemix Finance attempted to contact the hackers. The message described above was sent on-chain.
