CMC News

Gnosis Recovers $116M in Balancer Hack Through Hard Fork

#Gnosis chain operators completed a hard fork on Monday to recover funds from a November #Balancer exploit that resulted in $116 million worth of stolen digital assets. The project announced the hard fork in a Tuesday X post following a notice for node operators.

The recovered funds are now out of the #hacker's control, according to Gnosis, signaling a partial or full recovery. The hard fork followed a majority of validators adopting a soft fork in November in response to the Balancer exploit affecting managed contracts on Gnosis Chain.

Philippe Schommers, Gnosis head of infrastructure, stated in a Dec. 12 forum post that a community discussion continues around how people will claim back their funds. Contributors involved in the rescue mission may be recognized or compensated, though the immediate focus remains on enabling fund recovery by Christmas.

On Nov. 3, Balancer reported that the decentralized exchange and automated market maker had been exploited for more than $116 million. #On-chain data showed a hacker transferred millions in staked $ETH to a new wallet.

White hat hackers later managed to recover about $28 million of the stolen funds, according to Balancer. The majority of digital assets did not appear to have been regained at that time.

Once the recovered funds sit safely in a DAO controlled wallet, Gnosis will determine the next steps. The exploit was isolated to V2 Composable Stable Pools, according to the project.

Four different security companies conducted 11 audits of Balancer's smart contracts, according to a list of Balancer V2 audits available on GitHub. The platform's smart contracts had undergone extensive security review prior to the November #crypto exploit.