Most of Stolen Funds From Poly Network Hack Have Now Been Returned

The drama around the largest hack in decentralized finance (DeFi) history appears to be coming to an end after the attacker returned most of the stolen funds to a multisig wallet set up by Poly Network, with the exception of the $33 million worth of tether that was frozen by Tether.

• The latest refund progress was confirmed by Poly Network on Twitter Thursday, although a full recovery of the refunds will still require the attacker to give the final key for the multisig wallet.

• The DeFi platform, which operates on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Ethereum and Polygon, was hit by a hack that drained over $600 million in crypto earlier this week.
• The hacker began returning the funds on Tuesday to wallet addresses across the three chains.
• While it remains a question as to whether the attacker is a true "white-hat" hacker, Poly, which called the attacker "Mr. White Hat," offered $500,000 worth of tokens to him or her as a "legal bounty reward" on Thursday.
• The attacker, who acknowledged the offer, said he or she never responded to Poly about it and will send all of the money back.
• Shixing "Discus Fish" Mao, CEO and co-founder of mining pool F2Pool, said in a Weibo post that the negotiation of the refund took about 52 hours and included the participation of several parties including himself, a white-hat hacker named "MR. 600 MILLION," security firm Slowmist and Tether.
• Slowmist told CoinDesk on Friday that not long after the attack, the company was able to obtain internet protocol addresses (IP) and email addresses associated with the hacker, which may have put some pressure on the hacker to return the funds.
• Mao said that he will build a monument in Cryptovoxels, a virtual world on Ethereum, to commemorate the "historic" event, which he said has accelerated the development of security in the crypto industry.

UPDATE (August 13, 16:01 UTC): Updated throughout with the latest information and details about the return of the funds.

Read more: $600M Poly Heist Shows DeFi Needs Hackers to Become Unhackable