Crema Finance Hacker Accepts Bounty And Returns Over $7M OF Stolen Funds

Earlier this week, the concentrated liquidity protocol of Crema Finance, based in Solana, was exploited.

The cryptocurrency fund was worth around $9 million at the time of the hack. However, after a lengthy negotiation, the hacker has agreed to take 45,455 SOL as a White Hat reward and return the stolen money.

“After lengthy negotiations, the hacker agreed to take 45,455 SOL as a white hat reward. We are now confirmed to have received 6064 ETH + 23,967.9 SOL in four transactions. A follow-up compensation plan released in 48 hours Will go.”

Crema Finance Hacker Change of Heart 

?After a long negotiation, the hacker agreed to take 45455 SOL as the white hat bounty. Now we have confirmed the receipt of 6064 ETH + 23967.9 SOL in four transactions indicated below. A follow-up compensation plan will be released in 48h.

— CremaFinance (@Crema_Finance) July 6, 2022

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 loss due to Hacks 

Wormhole, one of the biggest cryptocurrency platforms that offers bridges to Solana and other blockchains, was hacked for about $320 million, or 120,000 ether, on February 2. A week prior to the Wormhole hack, DeFi protocol Qubit Finance was hit by hackers who stole 206,809 Binance Coins from Qubit’s QBridge protocol, worth about $80 million at the time.

There has been a “loss” of about $1.23 billion across the web3 ecosystem in the first quarter of 2022, according to a report by Immunefi. That number accounts for any funds lost due to hacks and fraudulent events.