The network also expressed its hope that “Mr. White Hat” would contribute to the future growth of the blockchain sector by accepting the $500,000 incentive it had given as part of negotiations around the return of the digital coins.
Poly Network, the cryptocurrency platform that lost $610 million in a hack earlier this week, said on Friday that it had offered a $500,000 “bug bounty” to the hacker or hackers.
It hailed the hacker, whom it branded a “white hat,” for “helping us improve Poly Network’s security,” in a statement. “White hat” is industry jargon for an ethical hacker who normally wants to uncover cyber vulnerabilities.
The statement did not indicate how the $500,000.00 would be paid. The hacker had reacted to the offer, but it was unclear whether it had been accepted.
On Thursday, Tom Robinson, chief scientist and co-founder of crypto tracking firm Elliptic, shared digital messages on Twitter showing a person claiming to have carried out the attack had indicated Poly Network had offered him the bounty to return the stolen assets.
Poly Network is a decentralised finance (DeFi) platform that supports peer-to-peer transactions with a focus on allowing users to transfer or swap tokens across different blockchains. Poly Network is a lesser-known name in the crypto world.
According to blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis, the as-yet unidentified hacker or hackers appear to have exploited a vulnerability in the digital contracts Poly Network utilises to shift assets between multiple blockchains.
According to the statement released on Friday, the hacker has returned $340 million in funds and moved the majority of the remaining to a digital wallet shared by them and Poly Network.
The remainder, held in tether, was frozen by the cryptocurrency firm behind the stablecoin.
The statement said, without giving further details “After communicating with Mr. White Hat, we have also come to a more complete understanding regarding how the situation unfolded as well as Mr. White Hat’s original intention,”
On Tuesday, Poly Network revealed the hack, but the next day, the hackers said they had began returning the digital coins they had seized.
In digital messages released by Elliptic, the hackers said they carried out the attack for fun and that returning the tokens was always the goal.