The creators of the UwU Lend protocol have announced a $5 million reward for anyone who can identify the attacker responsible for a recent exploit on the platform.
In a message sent on June 13, UwU informed the hacker that the deadline to return the stolen funds had passed, and offered a $5 million bounty to the first person who could locate them. The hacker failed to transfer 80% of the stolen funds back to UwU by the requested deadline of June 12 at 5:00pm UTC.
The bounty, to be paid in Ether (ETH), will be awarded before the funds are recovered or any legal action is taken. This decision comes after the same hacker executed a second exploit, stealing $3.7 million from UwU’s uDAI, uWETH, uLUSD, uFRAX, uCRVUSD, and uUSDT pools on June 13, according to cybersecurity firm Cyvers.
Both hacks were linked to the same wallet address “0x841…21f47,” as identified by Cyvers.
The initial attack resulted in a loss of $20.3 million due to a price manipulation scheme on June 10. UwU then asked the hacker to return 80% of the stolen funds and promised to refrain from legal action, but received no response. This lack of cooperation led to the second exploit just before UwU announced the $5 million bounty.
As UwU works on reimbursing victims of the first attack, which has already seen over $9.7 million repaid, the UWU Lend token (UWU) has only dropped 20% to $2.51 in the past week, despite a combined loss of $24 million. The token currently boasts a market cap of $22.6 billion.
According to CoinGecko, the cryptocurrency market has seen nearly $19 billion stolen since the first industry hack in June 2011. Experts recommend strategies to protect crypto assets in volatile markets.