Verus bridge attacker returns $8.5M, keeps 1,350 ETH bounty

The exploiter behind the Verus-Ethereum bridge drain returned 4,052.4 ETH, roughly $8.5 million, to the project’s team wallet and kept 1,350 ETH, about $2.8 million, as a bounty. Blockchain security firm PeckShield reported the return on Friday and said the recovered amount represents about 75% of the total taken.

Verus posted a bounty a day before the return, offering 1,350 ETH if the attacker sent 4,052.4 ETH to a single team address within 24 hours. The retained 1,350 ETH matches the bounty amount Verus specified.

The breach occurred days earlier when the Verus-Ethereum bridge was drained in a forged cross-chain transfer exploit. The incident followed a series of bridge and decentralized finance attacks reported in 2026. Verus moved quickly to seek recovery by naming a single return address and setting a time-limited bounty.

PeckShield noted that negotiated recoveries by projects do not prevent law enforcement or other parties from pursuing further action. Security firms and project teams sometimes work directly with exploiters to retrieve assets after attacks, while also notifying authorities.

Data aggregator DefiLlama recorded about $634 million in DeFi hacks in April, with two incidents at roughly $280 million and $293 million. Reported losses fell to about $38 million in May to date. Over the past decade, recorded crypto heists total more than $17 billion across 518 incidents, with many losses traced to compromised private keys, phishing and credential theft.

Projects have responded to breaches in various ways, including on-chain recovery offers, engaging white-hat hackers and cooperating with security firms and law enforcement to recover funds and investigate incidents.