The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, acting as a validator, processed an Ethereum transaction following the DeFi protocol Curve Finance hack and earned about $1m in rewards. This is reported by CoinDesk.
On July 30, an unknown attacked Curve Finance’s stablecoin pools and withdrew about $61.7m. The platform’s asset-pricing system operated incorrectly for a time.
A trading bot spotted a unique arbitrage opportunity and paid 570 ETH (about $1m at the rate at the time) to have the transaction processed out of turn.
The recipient of the reward was Coinbase, according to data from analytics firm Nansen and the lending protocol Alchemix, which was affected by the hack. Alchemix noted that the exchange had not reimbursed the assets even after a request.
“Coinbase demonstrated an unwillingness to return the funds, despite the deliberate extraction of value directly from the exploit,” said Alchemix.
The platform cited a lack of legal grounds for reimbursement.
On August 4, the Curve partially returned the funds, transferring assets valued at more than $20m to JPEG’d and Alchemix. The attacker received the promised reward of 10% of the amount.
Earlier in August, Curve offered a reward of $1.85m for identifying the hacker to bring him to court.
The project team said that the deadline for voluntary restitution had expired. Curve added that if the hacker fully reimburses the stolen assets, they would drop the pursuit.