Loopscale hacker in talks to return stolen crypto

The hacker behind the $5.8 million recent Loopscale exploit is in talks to return the stolen funds in exchange for a bounty, the Solana-based protocol said. 

The exploiter pilfered approximately 5.7 million USDC (USDC) and 1,200 Solana (SOL) tokens from two of Loopscale’s yield vaults on April 26, prompting the decentralized finance protocol to temporarily pause its lending markets. 

The following day, the hacker sent a message on the Etherscan blockchain scanner “indicat[ing] a willingness to return the exploited funds in exchange for a bounty,” Loopscale said in an April 27 X post. 

“We are agreeable to collaborating with you to reach a white hat agreement. However, we would like to negotiate the bounty percentage; our expectation is 20%,” the hacker said. “To demonstrate our commitment to a cooperative approach, we will immediately return the 5,000 wSOL funds following the transmission of this message,” they added.

Negotiations are ongoing for the remaining funds, according to the public messaging exchange on Etherscan. 

Related: Solana's Loopscale pauses lending after $5.8M hack

Web3 protocols frequently offer bounties to hackers in exchange for returning lost funds. However, only a small portion of the more than $1.6 billion in crypto stolen during the first quarter of 2025 has been successfully recovered. 

The Loopscale exploit only impacted the protocol’s USDC and SOL vaults, with losses representing around 12% of its total value locked (TVL),  Loopscale co-founder Mary Gooneratne said in an April 26 X post. 

In the aftermath of the attack, Loopscale temporarily halted lending but has since “re-enabled loan repayments, top-ups, and loop closing,” it said in an X post. 

“All other app functions (including Vault withdrawals) are still temporarily restricted while we investigate and ensure mitigation of this exploit,” Loopscale said.

Launched on April 10, Loopscale is a DeFi lending protocol that aims to improve capital efficiency by directly matching lenders and borrowers.

Additionally, Loopscale facilitates specialized lending markets, such as “structured credit, receivables financing, and undercollateralized lending,” it said in an April announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

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