Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Unizen announced that it would reimburse its users who lost 750,000 or less “as soon as humanly possible” after the platform got compromised, losing about $2.1 million in user funds.
On March 9, blockchain analytics firm PeckShield flagged an “approve issue” with the DeFi platform, reporting that over $2 million had already been drained. The security firm urged users to revoke the approvals from the trade aggregator to avoid further loss. Security company SlowMist estimated the exploit losses to be around $2.1 million and noted that the attacker swapped the Tether (USDT) for the stablecoin DAI (DAI).
A day later, the DeFi protocol sent an on-chain message to the hacker, offering a 20% bounty in exchange for returning the remaining stolen funds. The protocol also said they are already working with law enforcement and forensic experts to determine the hacker’s identity.
While the bounty negotiations are still ongoing, the DeFi protocol was quick to refund victims of the hack. On March 11, the company announced that it would make 99% of the affected users whole as soon as possible.
“Reimbursement for the rest of those will be given to the same wallets affected starting immediately. While we intend to start distributions today, we are going through each distribution individually in a slow, careful and methodical manner,” they wrote.
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According to the announcement, Unizen Founder and CEO Sean Noga loaned funds to the company to refund the hack victims. Users who lost below $750,000 will get their funds back, with refunds starting on March 11.
The company will return funds in USDT or USD Coin (USDC). However, for those who lost more than $750,000, the DeFi protocol said they would handle the issue on a case-to-case basis. Along with the announcement, the company also shared a video guide teaching users how to review and revoke approvals within the platform to avoid further losses.
Unizen’s chief technology officer, Martin Granström, also said on X they have already collected enough evidence for a post-mortem report and are working with third-party firms on the matter. The executive announced that they would share an incident report soon and promised to invest more in security in the future.
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