KyberSwap Offers 10% Bounty To Hacker Following $46M Exploit

The decentralized exchange KyberSwap has offered a 10% bounty to the hacker who stole $46 million on November 22. This move comes in response to a message left on the blockchain by the hacker.

KyberSwap alerted users on Nov. 23 that its liquidity solution, KyberSwap Elastic, was compromised and urged them to withdraw funds. The hacker stole approximately $7 million in wrapped Lido-staked Ether (wstETH), $4 million in Arbitrum (ARB), and $20 million in Wrapped Ether (wETH) on Nov. 22. The perpetrator then siphoned the loot across multiple blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base.

Following the exploit, the hacker wrote an on-chain message directed to KyberSwap employees, developers, liquidity providers, and decentralized autonomous organization members (DAO), stating, “Negotiations will start in a few hours when I am fully rested.”

After a day of silence on both sides, KyberSwap proposed a deal through an on-chain message. The team has offered 10% of the stolen funds (about $4.7 million) as a bounty on the condition that the hacker returns the remaining 90% to a specified wallet address by 6 a.m. UTC on November 25. Moreover, the team has included an email address on the message for private communications.

The company said:

“On the table is a bounty equivalent to 10% of users’ funds taken from them by your hack, for the safe return of all of the users’ funds. But we both know how this works, so lets cut to the chase so you and these users can all get on with life.”

KyberSwap Co-Founder Gives Ultimatum To Hacker

Victor Tran, the co-founder of KyberSwap, said in the message left on the blockchain that the hacker can return the funds or “stay on the run.”

KyberSwap is offering a reward deal to lessen the attack’s impact and restore liquidity providers. Beosin, a blockchain security firm, identified a flaw in the tick interval boundaries of Kyber’s liquidity pools. Before the attack, the exchange’s total value locked (TVL) was roughly $80 million. Now, it’s down to $7.56 million. Meanwhile, Kyber Network Crystal token (KNC) is trying to recover after falling sharply following a hacker attack. At the time of writing, the altcoin is trading at $0.7289, up 2.7% in the last 24 hours.