The individual who hacked and stole $31 million from Euler Finance, a decentralized lending project, has returned the remaining funds. This marks the end of the project's recovery efforts.
On Monday, around 6:55 p.m. EST, the attacker returned $31 million in three transactions, consisting of 10,580 ETH ($19 million) and $12 million in DAI. According to the Euler Finance team, this brings the total value of the returned funds to more than $177 million, accounting for 90% of the expected recoverable funds from the hack after adjusting for the 10% bounty previously offered by the project.
In a recent Twitter post, Euler Labs, the developer behind the affected project, confirmed the successful recovery, stating: "Following successful negotiations, all of the recoverable funds taken from the Euler protocol on March 13th have now been successfully returned by the exploiter."
The return of these funds represents a rare instance of positive resolution in the DeFi space, where large-scale hacks are becoming more common.On March 13, Euler Finance was the victim of a sophisticated attack that leveraged flash loans, resulting in a loss of $197 million in crypto assets. To recover the stolen funds, Euler Finance offered the attacker a 10% bounty worth $19.7 million, with a warning that if the remaining 90% of the funds were not returned, a $1 million reward for information on the attacker would be initiated.
Despite initial skepticism after the hacker laundered $1.8 million through the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash three days after the attack, the recovery process began on March 18 with the return of $5.4 million to Euler.
The hacker continued to return funds at varying intervals over the next few days. They returned the largest tranche of $102 million in ETH. On March 28, the hacker sent a series of on-chain messages to their address, sharing messages with the public using the input data. The attacker apologized in these messages and promised to return the remaining funds as soon as possible.