The hacker(s) who drained the coffers of Euler Finance of the sum of $200 million is talking in good faith and may be set to return the funds. According to screenshots of the communication with the core team, as shared by crypto data analytics platform CertiK, the hackers said they have no intention of keeping the funds that do not belong to them.
"We want to make this easy on all those affected. No intention of keeping what is not ours. Setting up secure communication. Let us come to an agreement," the hackers said in an on-chain message sent to the Euler Finance team.
It is becoming common practice for exploited protocols to engage with hackers, and the whole narrative is often turned into a glorified whitehat event. While there are still rewards attached, the loss is often reduced for the team and end users involved.
According to the Euler Finance exploiters, the conversation will be moved to Blockscan or to any of the platforms that the team chooses to advance the talks. The exploiter's motivation could have stemmed from the threat of a lawsuit embedded in the terrifying ultimatum that was issued by the team to the hackers.
No precedent is being set
As noble as the plans by the Euler exploiters is to return the stolen funds, they will not be setting any major precedent as other hackers have walked a similar path. First was the Poly Network hacker who stole and returned more than $600 million back in 2020. After a productive engagement with the team, he returned all of the stolen funds and was paid the associated bounty.
Mango Market exploiter Avraham Eisenberg also returned about $67 million of the more than $110 million stolen from the platform. He self-appropriated about $47 million meant for bounty, and he is currently proving that his actions are justified in an indictment brought on by the U.S. SEC and CFTC.