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As per the recent development, the hacker behind the SafeMoon exploit has agreed to return 80% of the stolen funds. The SafeMoon team announced on Twitter that it has reached an agreement with the party that held the funds. Similarly, the firm agreed to accept the return of 80% of its funds, whereas the remaining 20% would be held by the exploiter as a bug bounty. SafeMoon also mentioned that it has no plans of pressing charges against the exploiter.
The decision was made by keeping in mind the best interests of the company, as well as those of the community. SafeMoon can be classified as a DeFi protocol that runs on the BNB chain. It was hacked last month when the hacker drained Safemoon (SFM) and the Binance Coin (BNB) worth $9 million by manipulating a flaw in its smart contracts from its liquidity pool.
Soon after the exploit, the situation cooled off, and a great percentage of people expressed dissatisfaction over the way Safemoon handled the exploit. However, on April 18, the SafeMoon deployer account posted a transaction on the BNB chain, coupled with the hacker’s address as the recipient.
This development follows weeks after the hacker stated that they drained the funds accidentally. Not too long after the hacker made this move public, the SafeMoon team responded the same day and asked the hacker to share a Telegram handle so contact could be made.
What’s Next In the Safemoon Exploit Story?
All communications between SafeMoon and the hacker remained shrouded in mystery until April 18 when it was confirmed that an agreement had been reached. Nonetheless, the Safemoon (SFM) token has gone up by around 3% in the last 24 hours due to positive news related to its exploited funds.
It is a fact that countless DeFi protocols have become a target for exploits. At the same time, negotiating in hopes of getting the stolen funds back has increased as well. On April 4 this year, the Euler Finance hacker issued an apology and returned almost all of the stolen funds. Similarly, the hacker responsible for draining approximately $967,000 worth of cryptocurrencies from Sentiment returned almost 90% of the stolen funds, with the remaining 10% being kept by them as a bounty.
Keeping in mind how the problem is increasing rapidly on a regular basis, many Web3 developers argue that bug bounties must be higher than they currently are, and all development teams must display a sense of greater diligence when it comes to paying them. The main reason for making such statements in the first place is the belief surrounding how higher bounties could motivate hackers to report bugs instead of using them to their advantage.