Mixin Network Offers Hacker $20M to Return Stolen Funds

Mixin Network is offering a hacker  a $20 million bug bounty for the return of stolen users’ assets from its platform earlier this week.

In an on-chain message sent to the exploiter address on September 27, the decentralized wallet service provider said: 

“Most of our platform assets were users’, and we hope you can refund them. You can keep $20M of the assets as a BUG Bunty Reward for the BUG. Contact us via [email protected] for the reward details.” 

The attacker is yet to respond at the time of writing.

The Hack 

Previously, on September 25, Mixin Network announced the suspension of deposit and withdrawal services after suffering a $200 million hack. The incident was first alerted by SlowMist, a blockchain security firm. SlowMist revealed that the attack was caused by a compromise in Mixin’s cloud service provider database. 

At the time, Mixin stated that it had contacted Google and SlowMist to assist with investigations into the hack.

While analysis of how the exploit occurred wasn’t disclosed, Mixin founder Feng Xiaodong said in a Monday live broadcast that the platform could only compensate affected users up to half of their stolen assets. For the remaining assets, Xiaodong stated that it will be paid in the form of bond tokens, which Mixin will use its profit to buy back in the future.

Xiaodong also stated that the company will launch a new system to host users’ assets.

Mixin is a decentralized exchange and peer-to-peer transaction network provider for digital assets. The platform claims to house over 1 million users as of July 2023. 

The Biggest Hack of the Year

The attack on Mixin has been identified as the biggest cryptocurrency-related hack in 2023, surpassing March’s $197 million exploit of Euler Finance. However, Euler later saw most of its funds returned by hackers. 

Several other significant thefts of 2023 include Bonq DAO’s $120 Million exploit, CoinEX’s $54 million hack, and Curve Finance’s $47 million exploit.