Last updated on January 3rd, 2026 at 03:38 pm
Quick Breakdown
- Balancer unveils a detailed proposal to repay ~$8M recovered from its November v2 exploit.
- Whitehat responders to receive 10% bounties, while LPs receive pro rata in-kind reimbursements.
- Plan enters community review as the protocol works to close one of DeFi’s biggest 2025 incidents.
Balancer unveils repayment plan after major exploit
Balancer has published a new governance proposal outlining its plan to return roughly $8 million in recovered assets to liquidity providers affected by the protocol’s November v2 exploit.
The proposal, released on November 27, marks the first concrete step toward compensating users after one of the largest decentralized finance breaches of the year. The plan breaks down how funds secured by whitehat rescuers and Balancer’s internal team will be returned. The protocol confirmed that about $8 million was recovered across multiple networks, while a separate batch of roughly $19.7 million in osETH and osGNO handled by StakeWise is being processed independently.
Whitehat bounties
Whitehat actors who intervened during the attack would receive bounties equal to 10% of the assets they recovered. Payments will be made in the same tokens returned, in line with Balancer’s Safe Harbour Agreement.
Before the release of funds, each whitehat must pass identity verification, KYC, and sanctions screening, all of which have already been completed, though identities remain confidential.
Assets recovered through Balancer’s collaboration with Certora won’t be eligible for bounties since they were rescued under an active service agreement. These tokens will instead be returned directly to the pools affected.
Repayment terms for liquidity providers
LPs will receive funds on a pro rata basis based on their BPT holdings at snapshot blocks taken immediately before exploit transactions.
Reimbursements will be non-socialized, meaning each pool’s recovered assets will go only to LPs from that pool. It would also be in-kind, which means users receive the same tokens that were rescued.
Balancer also plans to launch a claim interface that requires users to accept the protocol’s terms before retrieving their funds. Any tokens left unclaimed after the claim window will be reallocated through a later governance vote.
Recap of the November attack
The November 3 exploit drained over $128 million across Ethereum and several layer-2 networks. The attacker exploited a precision-loss vulnerability in Balancer’s v2 invariant, manipulating token balances to trigger a rapid arbitrage loop that emptied pools within minutes.
A day after the exploit, Decentralized finance platform Stream Finance suspended all deposits and withdrawals following the discovery of a $93 million loss in assets managed by an external fund manager.
If you would like to read more articles like this, visit DeFi Planet and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and CoinMarketCap Community.
Take control of your crypto portfolio with MARKETS PRO, DeFi Planet’s suite of analytics tools.”
