In a report by Todayq News on August 4, 2023, DeFi platforms Curve, Metronome, and Alchemix collaborated to recover around $70 million that had been stolen in an exploit on July 30, 2023. They also offered a 10% bounty to the attacker if they voluntarily returned 90% of the funds by August 6. And they also announced, if this condition was not met, the bounty would increase for those who could identify the perpetrator. However, the attacker only returned the stolen assets of Alchemix and JPEGd.
Now, the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol Curve Finance has taken an innovative step, as it said on August 4, by offering a bug bounty reward of around 10% to anyone who can help identify the individual behind the recent incident that drained around $70 million from its pools.
In a surprising move on July 5, 2023, the hacker returned $10 million worth of ETH to JPEG’d, a decentralized lending protocol. As a show of appreciation, JPEG’d rewarded the hacker with a $1.1 million bounty. Furthermore, the attacker returned the stolen assets to Alchemix on August 6, 2023, as confirmed by a tweet from Alchemix officials.
With the deadline for voluntary fund returns having passed, Curve Finance is now extending the opportunity to the wider public. A substantial reward, amounting to 10% of the remaining exploited funds, will be granted to the individual who successfully identifies the responsible party and provides evidence leading to a conviction in a court of law. It is important to note that if the exploiter voluntarily returns the entire amount of funds, Curve Finance will refrain from taking any further actions.
Interestingly, before returning the funds, the attacker conveyed a message to the Alchemix and Curve teams. The message expressed the sentiment that the decision to refund the funds was driven by a desire to protect the involved projects, rather than being influenced by the possibility of being identified. The message highlighted the motivation behind this action, stating, “I am refunding not because you can find me, but because I do not want to harm your project.”
As the attacker is in the process of refunding the stolen assets, Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov is facing significant challenges due to a liquidity crisis. As a result, he sold around 140 million CRV tokens, totaling approximately $60 million. These steps were taken to safeguard his position and repay his debts. Nevertheless, Egorov still has a substantial amount of debt to settle.