Balancer Unveils $8 Million Reimbursement Plan Following $128 Million DeFi Exploit

Balancer has announced a reimbursement plan to compensate users impacted by a significant exploit that resulted in the loss of over $128 million from its V2 liquidity pools on various blockchains. This incident is recognized as one of the largest breaches in decentralized finance (DeFi) this year.

Key Takeaways

Balancer is proposing to reimburse approximately $8 million to users affected by a major exploit that drained $128 million from its V2 pools.
A total of around $28 million was successfully recovered through whitehat interventions and internal recovery efforts.
The remaining $19.7 million will be reimbursed in a separate process by StakeWise, managed through its own governance procedures.

A proposal released on Thursday by two community members outlines a plan to return roughly $8 million in recovered assets to those affected liquidity providers.

The available funds are sourced from a combination of whitehat actions and internal efforts executed during and after the attack. Balancer is currently seeking community feedback before any final agreement is reached.

Balancer Unveils $8 Million Reimbursement Plan Following $128 Million DeFi Exploit

Recovery Efforts and Impact on the Protocol

Balancer Recovers $28 Million After Exploit Operations

The exploit impacted liquidity pools across five different networks, necessitating Balancer to pause certain areas of the protocol while security teams and external researchers worked swiftly to protect at-risk assets.

In total, around $28 million of the stolen assets were ultimately recovered thanks to coordinated rescue operations by independent security researchers, members of Balancer’s internal team, and third-party collaborators.

According to the proposal, the reimbursement plan will specifically address the $8 million that was directly rescued by whitehats and Balancer’s internal crisis response operations.

The remaining assets, which amount to $19.7 million in osETH and osGNO, will be reimbursed separately via the governance process of StakeWise, which has pledged to repay affected users.

This plan adheres to Balancer DAO’s Safe Harbor Agreement, which clarifies the terms for whitehat recoveries and how compensation will be structured.

Bounties will be issued in the same tokens that were recovered, ensuring they are not deducted directly from users’ funds.

Whitehat contributors are eligible for a 10% bounty, with a cap of $1 million per operation, contingent upon their successful completion of identity verification and compliance checks.

Whitehat Recovery Highlights

A number of notable whitehat actors are recognized in the proposal, who collectively managed to recover around $3.9 million across various networks.

One particular individual, known as “Anon #1,” made the most significant recovery by reclaiming $2.68 million in assets on the Polygon network, which included WPOL, MaticX, TruMATIC, and stMatic tokens.

Balancer also partnered with the security firm Certora to conduct internal rescue operations, resulting in an additional recovery of $4.1 million from metastable pools on Ethereum, Optimism, and Arbitrum that, although at risk, had not yet been compromised.

To receive their funds, users affected by the exploit must digitally accept the updated terms and release Balancer Labs, its DAO, and related entities from any legal liability associated with the incident.

A claiming period of 180 days has been established; any unclaimed assets after this period may be redistributed through future governance votes.

According to CertiK's latest security report, crypto investors suffered losses exceeding $2.2 billion to hacks, scams, and related breaches in the first half of 2025, primarily due to wallet compromises and phishing attacks.

Wallet breaches alone accounted for $1.7 billion in loss over just 34 incidents, while phishing scams led to over $410 million in losses across 132 different attacks.