How This Hacker Was Rewarded After Returning Tender.fi’s Stolen Funds

The Tender.fi  “white hat” hacker accused of withdrawing over $1.59 million from the Arbitrum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol has returned the funds. A few days ago, the platform suspended lending services while attempting to recover these assets. 

Web3 smart contract auditor CertiK focused on blockchain monitoring, and analytics firm Lookonchain conducted an investigation. These firms traced the hacker who committed the crime after discovering a “misconfiguration” on Tender.fi’s Oracle.

White Hat Hacker Rewarded By Tender.fi 

After several attempts by the Defi lender protocol Tender.fi to contact the hacker for the stolen funds, the borrowing platform stated that the “whitehat” made contact and initiated discussions on how the situation would be resolved for customers’ funds. The protocol stated:

The whitehat has made contact over debank and we are currently in discussions on how to remedy this situation. We will update you with more information when we have it.

After hours of discussions via on-chain messages on Debank, the protocol stated that it had reached an agreement with the hacker, claiming that it had sent messages containing the terms of payment and agreements. Tender.fi commented:

The White Hat will repay all loans minus 62.158670296 ETH, which will be kept as a Bounty for helping secure the protocol. The Tender.fi Team will repay the Bounty value to the protocol, so that there will be no bad debt and users will remain unaffected.

Following the breach of the protocol, Tender.fi suspended all borrowing services, stating that they had noticed an unusual amount of borrowing coming through the platform, which was eventually solved once the hacker contacted the protocol. Tender.fi concluded:

The actor has completed the loan repayments. Funds are officially SaFu, post mortem on the way.

Tender.fi Token TND Suffered An Impact Following The Security Breach 

The native token of the DeFi protocol Tender.fi, under the ticker TND, fell more than 34% before the hacker returned the stolen funds to the platform. 

TND, traded on the decentralized exchange Uniswap, fell from $2.9 to $1.8 after the news of the security breach on the lending platform was published. After the negotiations, the token rebounded and stabilized above $2.70, according to CoinmarketCap data.

On the other hand, Tender.fi’s number of transactions on the lending platform has risen since the last month, meaning that the project has captured users’ attention. Investors are “actually using their products,” according to the blockchain analyst firm BlackMamba while concluding:

The current APY on Tender is super attractive and in the future, the project will release many interesting features to enhance the user experience as well as differentiate the project from other lending platforms on Arbitrum.

Feature image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView.com