Crema Finance Hacker Accepts Bounty and Returns Over $7M of Stolen Funds

The Solana-based concentrated liquidity protocol, Crema Finance, suffered an exploit earlier this week. The drained crypto funds were worth nearly $9 million at the time of the hack. However, following a long negotiation, the hacker has agreed to take 45,455 SOL as the white hat bounty and return the stolen funds.

“After a long negotiation, the hacker agreed to take 45,455 SOL as the white hat bounty. Now we have confirmed the receipt of 6064 ETH + 23,967.9 SOL in four transactions. A follow-up compensation plan will be released in 48h.”

Change of Heart

Crema Finance confirmed the receipt of 6,064 ETH and 23,967.9 SOL into the protocol’s Solana and Ethereum wallets in four transactions. The returned funds amounted to $7.6 million at the current price. The team earlier said that it would involve police and legal authorities should the perpetrator refuse its bounty reward of $800,000. The hacker then responded by saying,

“Crema team, since you are trying to reach me to negotiate, let’s chat”

The attacker, however, swooped in with negotiation of a much bigger bounty of around $1.7 million. The latest development means Crema Finance wouldn’t be taking legal action against them. The liquidity protocol will release a follow-up compensation plan in the next 48 hours.

DeFi heists have become a common affair, but it’s not always that stories of a twist in the tale emerge where the perpetrator does not run off with the haul. In a similar bizarre incident, Poly Network’s attacker returned nearly all of the money. A year ago, the hacker behind the biggest cryptocurrency heist of all time granted the DeFi platform access to the final tranche of stolen funds.

Crypto Losses

Q2 brought in significant losses for crypto, some 97% of which were the result of hacks, according to Immunefi’s latest report. During the second quarter, the platform detected $670,698,280 worth of losses, an increase of 52% from $440,021,559 in the same period for 2021.

The hacks in Beanstalk, Harmony Horizon Bridge, Mirror Protocol, and Mei accounted for the majority of these funds. The report also said that blackhat hackers are now primarily targeting and exploiting DeFi as 49 out of 50 instances involved DeFi protocols.