Stars Arena Recovers 90% of Stolen $3M, Gives Attacker 10% Bounty

Avalanche-based social app Stars Arena has recovered almost all the assets it lost during a recent security breach.

According to an official update from the Stars Arena team, the hacker agreed to return the stolen $2.9 million in AVAX tokens for a 10% bounty and 1,000 AVAX lost in a bridge.

Stars Arena Recovers Lost Assets

CryptoPotato reported last week that Stars Arena lost its total value locked (TVL) via a security breach in its smart contract. Before the theft, hackers had attempted to exploit the platform but managed to escape with $2,000.

After the first exploit, the Stars Arena team claimed they had patched the issue, seeking to dispel the “coordinated FUD” that had engulfed the crypto community. The team noted that they were “at war” with the attackers as they were bent on throwing away money to steal users’ assets.

It is worth noting that members of the X crypto community had warned about Stars Arena’s base contract being faulty, asking users who had shares in the protocol to sell while they could because the project was bound to be exploited.

Others slammed the protocol for failing to copy the Ethereum-based social platform Friend.tech properly. However, Emin Gün Sirer, the CEO of Ava Labs – the company behind the Avalanche blockchain – debunked the multiple warnings and insisted that the issue had been fixed.

After all was said and done, Stars Arena was hacked again two days later, with the attackers siphoning $2.9 million of the project’s TVL and leaving only $0.5. Following the incident, the project’s team warned users to stay away from the site as it was under a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

Attacker Receives 10% Bounty

Fortunately for Stars Arena, the perpetrator behind its TVL swipe reached out on October 11 with an on-chain message revealing they were willing to cooperate. The exploiter has returned 239,493 AVAX out of the stolen 266,104 AVAX, leaving 26,610 AVAX for themselves.

“We have recovered approximately 90% of the lost funds. We reached an agreement with the individual responsible for the recent security breach. The funds have been returned in exchange for a 10% bounty fee + 1000 AVAX that was lost in a bridge,” the Stars Arena team said.