Coinbase Unintentionally Made $1 Million After Curve Hack
Date: 2023-09-16 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: CRYPTO PAYMENTS
On July 30, an unknown person attacked the Curve Finance stablecoin pools and withdrew more than $61.7 million. The platform’s asset pricing system did not work correctly for some time.
A trading bot noticed a unique arbitrage opportunity and paid 570 ETH (approximately $1 million at the exchange rate at that time) to process the transaction “out of turn.”
The recipient of the reward was Coinbase, according to analytics company Nansen and the Alchemix landing protocol, which was affected by the hack. Despite the request, the exchange did not refund the assets.
“Coinbase has demonstrated an unwillingness to return funds despite knowingly benefiting directly from the exploit,” Alchemix said.
The platform responded negatively to the lack of legal grounds for refunds.
On August 4, the Curve hacker partially returned the funds that he had previously given to the JPEG’d and Alchemix projects. The fraudster received his promised reward - 10% of the amount.
On August 6, Curve offered a $1.85 million reward for identifying the hacker in order to bring him to justice.
The project reported that the deadline for voluntary refunds is expiring. Curve added that if the hacker fully compensates for the stolen assets, they will refuse to prosecute him.
