The Solana ecosystem DeFi protocol Loopscale hacker is negotiating to return the stolen Crypto Assets.

Source: Cointelegraph Original: "The Solana ecosystem DeFi protocol Loopscale hacker is in talks to return the stolen cryptocurrency"

The Solana-based protocol Loopscale has stated that the hackers behind the recent $5.8 million exploit are negotiating to return the stolen funds in exchange for a bounty.

On April 26, hackers stole approximately 5.7 million USDC and 1,200 Solana (SOL) tokens from two yield vaults of Loopscale, prompting the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol to temporarily suspend its lending market.

The next day, the hacker sent a message on the Etherscan blockchain explorer, stating "willing to return the stolen funds in exchange for a bounty," as mentioned by Loopscale in a post on platform X on April 27.

"We are willing to collaborate with you to reach a white hat agreement. However, we would like to negotiate the bounty percentage; our expectation is 20%," the hacker stated. "To demonstrate our commitment to this collaboration, we will immediately return 5000 wSOL funds after sending this message," they added.

According to publicly available information on Etherscan, negotiations regarding the remaining funds are still ongoing.

Web3 protocols often offer bounties to hackers in exchange for the return of stolen funds. However, of the over $1.6 billion in cryptocurrency stolen in the first quarter of 2025, only a small portion was successfully recovered.

The Loopscale vulnerability incident only affected the USDC and SOL vaults of the protocol, with losses accounting for approximately 12% of its total locked value (TVL), said Loopscale co-founder Mary Gooneratne in a post on the X platform on April 26.

After the attack occurred, Loopscale temporarily suspended lending, but later stated on the X platform that "loan repayments, recharges, and loop closures have been re-enabled."

"All other application functions (including vault withdrawals) remain temporarily restricted so that we can investigate and ensure the mitigation of the impact of this vulnerability," Loopscale stated.

Loopscale was launched on April 10th as a decentralized financial lending protocol aimed at improving capital efficiency by directly matching borrowers and lenders.

In addition, Loopscale also facilitates the professional lending market, such as "structured credit, accounts receivable financing, and under-collateralized lending," as mentioned in an announcement shared with Cointelegraph in April.

Related News: The Solana (SOL) ecosystem lending protocol Loopscale has suspended services after a $5.8 million hack.