Blockchain data reveals that the exploiter in charge of syphoning off $61 million in assets held on the decentralised exchange Curve Finance has returned some of the stolen cryptocurrency after speaking with one of the victims on Friday.
Alchemix, one of the robbery victims, was asked to confirm the protocol’s address so that the looter may return the stolen goods in a message attached to an Ethereum blockchain transaction. The blockchain data on Etherscan reveals that shortly after, he sent about $10 million in ether (ETH) and alETH in numerous transactions to Alchemix’s multisignature wallet.
The transactions give rise to optimism that the majority of the stolen assets will be returned to victims in one of the most shocking cryptocurrency exploits of the year. An unidentified hacker used a code flaw to plunder several trading pools, costing Curve, Metronome, and Alchemix $61.7 million in cryptocurrency assets over the weekend.
The impacted protocols announced on Thursday a 10% reward for recovering the assets by August 6th.
The Curve vulnerability caused havoc in the decentralised finance industry as worried investors withdrew their holdings as a safety measure. In the aftermath, the price of the CRV token dropped by as much as 31% to 50 cents.
The fall left Michael Egorov, the founder of Curve, at risk of having to liquidate the $168 million CRV used to back his loans. With tens of millions in bad debt, a liquidation would have put lending organisations like Aave in dire straits.
In order to pay off creditors and avert the near-catastrophe, Egorov sold about $42 million of his CRV hoard, including to cryptocurrency inventor Justin Sun, creator of the Tron network.