Following a complete loss of its total value locked due to an exploit, the decentralized finance protocol SIR.trading has reached out to the attacker with a $100,000 bounty in exchange for the return of the remaining funds.
On March 31, Xatarrer, the pseudonymous developer behind the Ethereum-based platform, made an on-chain appeal directly to the hacker.
In the message, they offered the attacker to retain $100,000, approximately 28% of the stolen assets, as a “fair share” for uncovering a significant vulnerability, promising that no legal actions would follow if the remaining amount was returned.
Xatarrer emphasized that the project was built over a four-year period, fueled by late-night coding sessions and the collective investment of $70,000 from friends and supporters.
Without any backing from venture capital firms, the protocol had organically increased to about $400,000 in total value locked before it was entirely drained by the exploit.
“If you take 100% of the funds, there’s no chance for us to recover,” they noted.
Xatarrer also recognized the skill displayed in the exploit, describing the attack as “almost beautiful if it weren’t for all the funds that people lost.”
As of now, there has been no reply from the attacker. Data from Etherscan reveals that the stolen cryptocurrency has already been routed through Railgun, a privacy protocol that conceals transaction trails.
The protocol, also referred to as Synthetics Implemented Right, was compromised on March 30, when a flaw in one of its core smart contracts led to the draining of its total value locked.
The vulnerability was associated with a function in the smart contract known as uniswapV3SwapCallback, which forms part of the Vault contract. Experts highlighted that the weakness related to Ethereum’s transient storage, a feature introduced in the Dencun upgrade to help lower gas fees.
The attacker exploited the transient storage before the transaction concluded, using it to overwrite security data mid-execution. This enabled them to deceive the smart contract into accepting a counterfeit Uniswap pool address that was under the attacker’s control.
In the aftermath, Xatarrer expressed hopes for the protocol’s revival. In a recent message on X, the founder indicated that the team has already commenced “planning” future steps for the project.
The SIR.trading incident is part of a growing list of crypto security breaches this year. Last month, the Starknet-based layer 2 money-market protocol zkLend suffered a loss of over $9 million in Ethereum due to an exploit.
February proved particularly harsh, with losses from hacks and scams exceeding $1.5 billion, according to a report from blockchain security firm Certik released on March 5.