WTF?! It's a bizarre turn of events, no matter how you slice it. In the mostly anonymous world of cryptocurrency, once funds have been transferred, there's usually no recourse and no way to trace who took the currency. Presumably, the hacker(s) involved here either made some serious mistakes that pointed to their guilt or they suddenly developed a conscience and felt compelled to return the booty. Or maybe they are a white hat hacker that just wanted to exploit a vulnerability in the service in hopes of expediting a fix?
dForce founder Mindao Yang said in a Medium post on April 19 that the lending protocol in the dForce network, Lendf.Me, had been attacked and roughly $25 million in digital assets had been stolen. It's the type of headline that has unfortunately grown quite common in the world of cryptocurrency but this one has taken a rather unexpected turn.
In a follow-up post on Medium earlier today, Yang reported that nearly all of the stolen funds have been "recaptured" through a collaborative effort by law enforcement, investors, the community, their team members and their partners.
"We are still in the middle of the process so unfortunately I cannot share more details at this time; however, I will absolutely do so in a future post," Yang promised.
The executive said the most important thing to know is that those who were affected by the theft will be made whole again.
What's even stranger is that, as CoinDesk highlights, the hacker did not return the exact same balance of assets that were stolen but rather, returned funds in different types of tokens. It all seems a little fishy but such is the world of cryptocurrency. Until Yang shares additional details, we're left scratching our heads and wondering what really happened.
Masthead credit: Morrowind, CoinDesk