Verus bridge exploiter returns $8.5M after bounty offer

The attacker behind the Verus bridge exploit has returned 4,052 Ether, worth about $8.5 million, to the project’s team wallet. The return came after Verus offered a 1,350 ETH bounty for the recovery of most of the stolen funds.

The exploiter retained 1,350 Ether, worth about $2.8 million as a bounty, according to blockchain security firm PeckShield on Friday. That represents about 75% of the stolen funds returned.

Verus had offered the bounty a day earlier. It said it would treat the retained Ether as a reward if the exploiter returned 4,052.4 Ether to the team address within 24 hours.

The recovery shows how some crypto projects try to negotiate directly with exploiters to recover stolen funds. Though such deals do not necessarily prevent law enforcement or third parties from taking action in the future.

The exploit and its aftermath

The recovery comes days after the Verus-Ethereum bridge was drained in a forged cross-chain transfer exploit. This adds to a string of bridge and decentralized finance attacks that have kept crypto security concerns high in 2026.

DeFi hacks topped $600 million in April alone. Data aggregator DefiLlama shows cumulative losses reached $634 million in stolen value during that month. The $280 million Drift Protocol exploit and the $293 million Kelp exploit represented the largest incidents of the month.

May sees a decline in losses

Losses have fallen sharply in May, with DefiLlama data showing roughly $38 million stolen so far this month. Still, cryptocurrency hacks remain one of the biggest hurdles halting mainstream blockchain adoption.

During the past decade, crypto hackers stole over $17 billion across 518 recorded incidents. The majority stemmed from compromised private keys, alongside phishing and other credential-based attacks, Cointelegraph reported on April 21.

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