Crypto Curve (CRV): Ultimatum ends, hacker taunts community

Last Friday, Curve set a deadline for hacker DeFi to return all the stolen money: Sunday August 6 at 8 a.m. UTC. Once this deadline has passed, the team will take drastic measures to hand him over to the appropriate authorities. If the latest news is to be believed, the pirate has returned part of the jackpot. And in the process, he has dared to mock the crypto community by saying that he is “smarter” to evade possible hunts.

Curve Finance starts the manhunt

The deal worked out with the pirate was as follows: either he returns 90% of all the money stolen and allows himself 10% in rewards, or he does nothing and Curve will reward anyone who can identify them.

🚨 Deadline expirée – nouveaux enjeux pour Curve

Sans réponse du hacker de la pool CRV/ETH, le protocole propose les 10% des fonds volés (destinés au hacker s’il retournait les fonds) à quiconque capable d’identifier le hacker pour les poursuites judiciaires pic.twitter.com/ldAA1cTbrl

— OAK (@oak_fr) August 6, 2023

Curve Finance will award $1.8 million to the person who facilitates the pirate’s arrest.

Curve hacker returns a portion… ironically

However, yesterday, several crypto media outlets revealed the return of some of the money stolen from the Curve protocol on Sunday, July 30.

Alchemix

All funds stolen by Curve finance hacker have been returned to lending platform Alchemix. Read more: https://t.co/r6sXUEtbKG

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) August 5, 2023

This Cointelegraph article highlights the return of the $13.6 million belonging to Alchemix’s alETH-ETH pool. An operation executed in two stages.

The team didn’t fail to gloat on Twitter:

“We are extremely happy to announce that all funds stolen by the hacker of the Alchemix @CurveFinance pool have now been returned.”

JPEG’d

JPEG’d has confirmed the return of 5,495 ETH, worth $10 million, from the Curve hacker. In a white-hat rescue, the hacker received a 610.6 ETH bounty. https://t.co/sJwQuOU80V

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) August 5, 2023

“JPEG’d has confirmed the return of 5,495 ETH, worth $10 million from the Curve hacker. As part of a white-hat rescue, the hacker received a bounty of 610.6 ETH.”

Cointelegraph also reported that the funds were returned in the region of $10 million to the DAO JPEG’d multisig wallet.

What about the other pools?

But these sums combined don’t represent even half the funds siphoned off at Curve Finance and the DeFi protocols orbiting around it. Cryptos belonging to the Metronome (msETH/ETH), valued at $3.4 million, and Curve DAO, valued at $22.6 million, pools have yet to be returned.

Confident, the hacker mocked the crypto community by launching:

“I’ve known some ridiculous cases, so I want to make it clear that I’m paying you back not because you can find me, but because I don’t want to ruin your project, maybe it’s a lot of money for a lot of people, but for me, I’m smarter than all of you.”

When intelligence serves the ego, it could only lead to this kind of self-proclamation.

What does the future hold for DeFi?

After so many DeFi protocol attacks, costing some $300 million in July 2023 alone, Daniel Kuhn (Consensus Magazine) weighs in on the future of decentralized finance.

First, he spoke of the discussions currently underway among DeFi project promoters. These include changes to the current AMM liquidity model.

And they’ll need to be speeded up, given recent reactions from the DeFi community. Indeed, many investors have begun withdrawing funds from other platforms such as Aave.

The Defiant has also reported that this has led to a rise in borrowing costs in this financial sub-sector.

Fortunately, Coffeebabe.eth, Chainlink and Uniswap are currently focusing on increasingly secure transaction mechanisms. Is this enough to stop DeFi protocol hacks?