thedefiant.io
30 October 2026 20:14, UTC
Synthetix’s protocolDAO recovered 8.4 million $SNX stolen in the Binance breach, using administrative control over the token’s permissions to move the assets into its own Safe wallet.
The Ethereum transaction transferred 8,405,741.58 $SNX at 7:03 p.m. ET on Thursday, Oct. 29. Etherscan valued the tokens at about $1.54 million when reviewed Friday.
An earlier transaction shows the same quantity of $SNX moving from a wallet labeled Binance 14 to the address from which the DAO later recovered it.
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In a Friday post, Synthetix, a derivatives protocol, said the recovered tokens were secured in the protocolDAO Safe. “We have notified Binance,” it said.
The recovery is a token-level intervention in a much larger breach. Binance co-CEO Richard Teng estimated the total impact at roughly $6.3 billion. In its latest investigation update, Binance said around $3 billion had been frozen with partners’ help.
The transaction’s internal calls show that the protocolDAO temporarily made its Safe the address authorized to update $SNX’s token-state contract—the separate contract that records balances and spending allowances. It then set an allowance permitting the Safe to spend 8.4 million $SNX from the attacker-linked wallet.
The DAO restored the token-state contract’s association with $SNX’s normal token implementation, then used that allowance to transfer the $SNX into the Safe. The sequence used privileged contract access, rather than a return payment initiated by the attacker.
Binance says it will cover all losses from its SAFU fund and company funds. Withdrawals remain suspended while the exchange works on security changes, while deposits are operating normally, according to Teng’s update.
For the recovered $SNX, the next step is a transfer back to the exchange: Synthetix says it will send the tokens to Binance on request.
