Shiba Inu Offers Bounty for Return of Stolen Assets
Shiba Inu’s decentralized finance platform, operating on its Shibarium layer-2 network, has issued a bounty of 5 Ether (equivalent to $23,000) to the individual responsible for a recent bridge exploit, encouraging the return of the stolen assets.
On Monday, the DeFi platform communicated via an on-chain message that the bounty will be available for 30 days. They specified a deadline and indicated that the bounty amount would start to decline after seven days.
“Settlement is atomic when we call recoverKnine(). If you call accept() we cannot cancel the deal. Code is law,” K9 Finance stated. “Bounty is live. Please, act fast.”
In a post on X this past Saturday, Shiba Inu developer Kaal Dhairya mentioned that although they have reached out to the authorities, the team remains open to discussions with the attacker.
The exploit on Saturday resulted in the loss of approximately $2.4 million in digital assets after malicious actors managed to gain access to validator signing keys. By employing a flash loan to purchase 4.6 million Bone ShibaSwap (BONE) tokens, the attacker secured majority validator control and executed a fraudulent transaction to transfer the funds out of the bridge.
Dhairya reported that, in light of the attack, the Shibarium developers have suspended their stake and unstake functions and transferred their stake manager funds into a hardware wallet managed by a multisig.
The developer emphasized that restoring network security and protecting user assets is their primary concern. Dhairya added that they are collaborating with security teams, including Hexens, Seal 911, and PeckShield, to conduct an investigation.
Impact on Shiba Inu Ecosystem Tokens
Following the exploit, tokens linked to the Shiba Inu ecosystem experienced price declines. The price of the Shiba Inu (SHIB) token fell from $0.0000145 on Saturday to $0.0000131 at the time of writing, marking a 7% drop.
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- The K9 Finance (KNINE) token decreased from $0.00000287 to $0.00000257, a 10% decline.
- In addition, ShibaSwap’s token, BONE, has seen a significant 38% drop since Sunday, falling from $0.31 to $0.19.
The Shibarium exploit comes in the wake of another smaller-scale attack directed at the personal wallet of THORChain co-founder John-Paul Thorbjornsen (JP Thor). Onchain investigator ZachXBT reported on Friday that Thorbjornsen’s wallet was compromised following a scam involving a meeting call on Telegram.
