Decentralized lending protocol zkLend has officially activated its Recovery Portal, enabling users affected by the platform’s February 12 exploit to claim their lost funds.
The announcement was made on March 5 via a post on X, where zkLend urged users to verify official communications before proceeding with their claims.
The exploit, which drained approximately $9.6 million from zkLend’s liquidity pools, led to an immediate halt in withdrawals as the platform launched an investigation.
Blockchain security firm Cyvers later determined that the stolen funds were transferred to the Ethereum network, with the hacker attempting to obscure the transactions through Railgun, a privacy-focused protocol. However, Railgun’s internal compliance measures forced the return of the assets to the hacker’s original address.
In response to the breach, zkLend attempted to negotiate with the attacker, offering a 10% “white hat” bounty in exchange for the return of 3,300 ETH. Despite setting a February 14 deadline, the platform was unable to recover the funds. To further its efforts, zkLend enlisted the assistance of law enforcement as well as security experts from Binance Security, StarkWare, and the Starknet Foundation.
On February 20, zkLend outlined a recovery plan, stating that deposits in unaffected pools would be fully refunded. Meanwhile, users impacted by the hack would receive partial compensation along with a claim position in zkLend’s dedicated recovery pool. The platform has scheduled withdrawals to begin two weeks after the Recovery Portal undergoes an audit.
Security experts analyzing the attack suggest that the breach was not due to a failure in Starknet’s proof system but rather a flaw in zkLend’s smart contract logic.
The launch of zkLend’s Recovery Portal came amid a dramatic rise in cryptocurrency-related hacks, with February 2025 recording $1.53 billion in losses—an 18-fold increase compared to the same period in 2024. According to a report by security firm Immunefi, the total losses for the year had already exceeded the entire amount stolen in 2024, reaching $1.6 billion.
The report revealed that centralized finance platforms bore the brunt of the attacks, accounting for 95.5% of total losses due to a single large-scale exploit, while DeFi protocols experienced eight incidents, making up 4.5% of the total. BNB Chain and Ethereum were the most targeted blockchains, responsible for 72.8% of total losses.
The two largest incidents—a $1.46 billion hack on Bybit and a $49.5 million breach at stablecoin bank Infini—accounted for over 90% of the funds stolen, while smaller attacks, including those on zkLend and Ionic Money, further highlighted the growing security challenges in the crypto sector.
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